The Company
by ice-storm1196
Summary: The Company specializes in hunting and researching monsters. Angel is a child with wings brought to the Company. He meets Mary Winchester, and later her sons. But the Company and it's owners are not all they seem. Sort of Canon compliant. SamxRuby, SamxJess, JohnxMary, DeanxMary Sorry for formatting errors.
1. Angel

Mary Winchester stared at the small creature, culred up and sobbing in the center of a sizeable cage, coller around it's neck. A chain stretched from the coller to the bars of the cage, and the creature was as far from the edges of the cage as the chain would comfortably allow it. It cried, huffing out words in a language Mary didn't know.

"It's just a baby," she said, a little stunned. Her co-worker, Bela, shrugged, tucking a long strand of silky hair back behind her ear.

"It's a monster," she said, voice clipped and cuncaring. "We collect monsters.:

Mary felt a quickening in her gut, and she absently touched a hand to her stomach. "It can't be more than, what, three?"

Bela shrugged again. "How the hell should I know? It's probably a shifter or something. Trying to trick us into thinking it is innocent." Bela didn't trust monsters at all. Not their intentions, not their natures. Mary was more pragmatic. A lot of what monsters did, she knew, was pure instinct, having less to do with a desire to trick and more with a desire to survive. She had brown up hunting them, after all, and the company used her knowledge and experience with all sorts of the creatures they caught. Mostly, she knew, the supernatural creatures tried to stay unobtrusive, out of sight and out of harms way. Sometimes though, they got greedy, or started to feel entitled, or went a bit mad and started killing wantonly, just to kill. That's when hunters or, Mary had thought, the Company stepped in. But this was just a i_child/i_. He hadn't hurt anyone. It would have said on his file if he was brought in for hurting or killing a human. But there was nothing. At least, nothing in the file Mary had seen. And she was supposed to see _everything_, because she was one of the few that had almost exclusive access to all of the monsters in the Company facility.

This child was unknown 009—Winged Classification 2-Bird (As the small tattoo on his arm denoted him U009WC2B. And that was all they knew of him. They weren't sure quite what he was, only the ninth unclassified monster they'd ever found, two bird-like wings and an extra set of muscles to control them the only things differentiating him from a human child. Mary could see the child. Bela only saw the monster.

"Well, it certainly has a pair of healthy lungs," she said, clearly annoyed, her crisp, British tones starting to sound a bit frayed. "Lilith will want it to shut up. Maybe she'll muzzle it or something." Mary shot a glare her co-worker's way. "What?" snapped the other woman before rolling her eyes, and capping her pen. "I'm going to finish my report elsewhere. You're a mother. Shut it up, or I'll call Lilith to do it." She sauntered out of the room, leaving Mary alone with the monster. The child.

She swallowed, and carefully used her key-card to unlock the cage, slipping inside. She closed the door behind her, but didn't lock it. It was a toddler and chained up besides. Escape wasn't possible. She sat carefully in front of it. Him.

"Hey, baby," she said softly, like she might if her own son, Dean was hurt or scared. "Hey, don't cry." Stupid thing to say really, he had lots of reason to cry. But she wasn't entirely sure he could understand her words, considering that he had yet to speak a word of English, and no one was sure what language he _was_ speaking, It would be best, for the moment, to talk to him like a spooked animal. Calming, using words she'd use for her own child. "It's alright," she continued. "But it's best if you stay quiet, alright?" She reached out a hand tentatively, and touched his head. He flinched away, and her heart ached. What had he been through already in the past two days or so since he'd been caught that he was expecting her to bring pain? She started threading her hand through his baby-soft dark hair. It looked different than Dean's but it felt the same. It hurt more, she thought, that the two boys were of an age. Maybe they'd even have been friends. If this boy wasn't a supernatural, anyway. This was going to be hard. Especially if she kept comparing him to Dean. Mary kept up her soothing talk, stroking his hair gently. Soon, the boy started to relax, to calm down.

"Shh, shh," Mary hushed. She wanted to pick him up, to hold him, but she didn't dare. She wasn't even supposed to be in the cage at all, much less helping him feel better. He asked something then, voice hoarse and broken, in that strange language of his. "I don't know what you are saying, baby," she said, sadly. "I know it's got to be scary. In this place with strange people. Poking you and hurting you. I'm sorry baby. " The boy sniffed.

"Mama," he said, or at least, it sounded like it.

"You want your mother?" asked Mary, heart pounding.. He nodded, breath hitching again. "Do you understand me?" He nodded again, thumb finding its way to his mouth. He watched her now, breath still shuddering through him, choked sobs sporadically wracking his small frame. "Do you speak English?" There was a long pause this time, and he slowly shook his head. "Were you learning." His eyes, huge and so _very_ blue, filled again, and he nodded, shaking. "That's okay," she soothed. "Don't cry, Angel. Maybe we can teach you, alright? You'll be able to tell us what you need." They wouldn't kill it—him—not until they knew what it was, what it ate, what it was capable of. And hopefully, not even then. It was just a child. He. _He_ was just a baby.

She wasn't sure how long she sat there, but soon the child-Angel-she called him in her head, was sleeping. She didn't think it was that long, because after smoothing his red, warm, tear-stained cheek, she stood easily. She'd rather expected to be stiff or achy, but apparently, time had not gone as quickly as she had thought. Mary left the cage, locking it securely behind her. She couldn't stay in here to fill out her log, not while the boy slept, miserable and frightened on the hard floor of the cage. She wanted to help him. That was odd. She never wanted to really i_help/i_ the monsters. Perhaps it was because this one was so young. She shivered. Whatever it was, she had a bad feeling about the whole situation.

Mary was called to Lilith's office early the next day, only moments after clocking in. Lilith unnerved Mary, quite a lot. She was the head of the Company, it's founder and lead proponent. She was ruthless in getting information, though she hid her worse nature with a small smile and a pretty face. Honestly, Mary thought the woman looked a bit alien, but most people did seem to find her attractive. Still, she smiled, but her eyes were cold. Everything about her was like ice. Mary didn't like her, and she didn't trust the woman further than she could throw her. Lilith knew this, and it didn't seem to bother her. That unnerved Mary too. She simply ignored her most of the time. Except, it seemed, today. "Mary Winchester," she said, with a small, humorless smile. "The logs are quite interesting. What interest have you in U009WC2B? Surely you aren't getting it confused with a real child?"

Mary swallowed, licked her lips. "No," she said, slowly. "But he—it—is just a baby. And it seems intelligent too. I don't think it speaks English, but it understands it fine. I think, if we taught it…well, I think it can be taught."

"Really," said Lilith, slowly. Mary nodded. "And why would we want to do that?" asked her boss, almost with a genuine curiosity.

'To see what it can do," said, Mary, a little confused. "That's what we do here, isn't it? See what the monsters are capable of, within laboratory conditions."

Lilith looked almost amused by that.. "Of course," she said. "Very well. You have one month to show me it is worth trying to teach the little monster anything. If it does not learn enough, then we will stop your teachings. I will have others test it's physical limits. You can be in charge of learning it's mind." Mary nodded. Lilith would torture the poor thing, she knew that. But she hoped, if she could prove that it was clever, that there was merit in keeping him whole…maybe it—he—wouldn't be irreversibly harmed. "You may go," said Lilith, returning to…whatever it was she was doing. Shuffling paper around on her desk it looked like, but Mary just nodded and stood, leaving the room before Lilith changed her mind. She always felt a little bit weak and shaky after leaving Lilith, and she leaned against the wall to recover a bit before pushing off and striding down the hall, twisting her long blonde hair into a pony-tail as she did so. She had a child to teach.

Mary knew she shouldn't get attached. The child was a monster, he wasn't ihuman/i, he wouldn't have the capacity for caring about anyone but himself. But he looked up when she entered the room, and she swore she saw relief in those sad blue eyes. Bela raised her eyebrows. "You're to teach it?" she asked. Mary nodded. "And I'd prefer to do it without an audience," she said. Bela rolled her eyes. "You can come back later," said Mary. "And you don't need to be in the room to take your notes. Go to the observation room." Bela sighed, and left. Honestly, she didn't really care, but sometimes Her High and Mighty Righteousness Winchester needed to be reminded that Bela didn't actually work for her.

Mary waited until the woman was gone, and opened the cage, closing the gate behind her. She sat across from the boy again. "Hello again Angel," she said, with a little smile. He didn't return the smile, instead watching her warily. "Can you say 'hello?'" He stared at her, a little sullenly. This might be harder than she'd thought. She had to get him to trust her.

"I'm Mary," she said, pointing to herself. He gave a tiny nod. "Can you say it? Mary?"

"Mary," he said. She grinned at him.

"Excellent. Do you have a name?" He didn't answer, just stared, blue eyes never leaving her brown ones. She licked her lips. After a moment, she reached into the pocket of her lab coat, pulling out her wallet. She pulled out a photograph and showed it to the little boy. "That's me," she said, unnecessarily. "And that is my son, Dean." The monster child studied the photograph intensely for a long moment.

"Dean," he said, finally. Mary nodded.

"Yes. Dean. He's about your age. I think you'd like him. Well, I don't know about that, but he'd definitely like you. He's a sweet boy. And he is fascinated by birds right now, so he'd like your wings. They are very pretty," she added, glancing at the soft grey feathers. He fluffed them a little. She wasn't sure if that was pleasure or discomfort, so she continued talking. "Dean is a little chatterbox," she said, and smiled at the other boy's confused look. He narrowed his eyes at the picture again, holding it tightly, trying to figure out what exactly she meant by that. "Chatterbox. I guess you haven't heard that before." He didn't respond, but she continued anyway. "It means he talks a lot. About anything and everything that crosses his mind. Birds and fish and bugs and trees and if the moon is made of cheese." The boy shook his head. "Do you know what the moon is made of then, Angel?" she asked.

He licked his lips and spoke again, in that language she didn't know. He stopped at her confused expression, and deflated a bit. He touched the floor of the cage, hard cement, and looked up at her.

"Rock?" she asked, wondering if that is what he meant, and he nodded. It was the dim grey of the floor too, he knew, but he wasn't sure how to express that in English just yet. It was easier to hear and read that it was to speak and write. "Can you say it? The moon is made of rocks?" He shifted slightly and looked down.

"The moon is made of rocks," he parroted.

"Good!" she said, enthused. At least he understood her. That would make everything a lot easier. His feathers fluffed slightly, though his face didn't change, and she thought that meant he was pleased. After a moment of silence, the boy seemed to be struggling with what the proper words. "Come on Angel," she said quietly. "I won't be mad if you get it wrong, I promise."

"Cheese?" he asked. "The moon…um. Made of cheese."

"Why does he think the moon is made of cheese?" The boy nodded. "He saw a cartoon." That didn't look like it explained anything. "There is a story," she said, about a man and his dog, and they build a rocketship and go to the moon because they are out of cheese for their crackers, and the moon was made of cheese so they built the ship to go and get some." She almost laughed at the nonplussed expression on the child's face. "It's just a story," she said.

"Silly," he said. "No…go to moon. "

"Not for cheese anyway," she agreed. "It would be easier to just go buy some more at the store. But it was just a silly, fun story, like I said. It doesn't have to make sense." That seemed to appease the boy for now.

Mary spent almost all day with the child, calling him Angel more often in her head now, as well as directly to him. Tomorrow, she thought, she'd bring a book. They could read, and he'd get better with words and syntax. He was already doing quite well, she thought. He struggled more with getting words in their proper place, and using identifiers. He didn't seem very going at prepositions or tenses, or even simple things like 'the' and 'or' and 'and.' Possibly the language he seemed to be used to didn't use words like that, though it was hard to wrap her head around. Before she left, she tried to take the picture back, but Angel didn't seem to want to part with it.

"Mary," he said. "Dean." He held it to his chest, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. Mary offered a small smile.

"Alright," she said. "You can keep it. I'll be back though. Tomorrow I'll bring a book." He looked doubtful. "I promise, Angel. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Mary…" he hesitated.

"Yes?"

"Angel?"

"Well, I don't know your name, do I?" she asked. "And you look like an angel. With the wings and all." He nodded slowly, mulling this over. "What is your name?" He tightened his lips, and didn't answer, just stared at the picture of Mary and Dean. Mary nodded to herself, and left the cage, offering one last goodbye as she went.


	2. Mary

He had been laughing. He remembered that. Fat fingers tickled his stomach and merry brown eyes had gazed down at him. His brother. He held his stomach, crying now, no laughter. No mischievous eyes twinkling down at him. He'd managed to escape his brother, and dart away, pausing at the side of the small spring just long enough for the older boy to catch up to him before jumping in, splashing water everywhere, and making the other laugh. He'd run across the stream sticking out his tongue, and turned at a sound behind him. Big arms scooped him up, and a bag thrust over his head, He struggled, but wasn't strong enough. He heard shouting. His brother? And then there was a sharp jab, and then he knew nothing else.

When he woke, everything hurt. Bright lights shone down, piercing his eyes and making them tear. For a moment, he thought maybe it was a game of sorts, but the table he was lying on was cold and metal, and something equally cold pinned him at his wrists and ankles. "Esiasch*" he cried out. "Lvlo!" But there was no answer. A stranger, huge and with cold watery eyes and no mouth, or nose, just a blue skin glared down at him. "Bagle nanaeel ol nanaeel oi ol ollog**"?" He was crying now, but when he tried to get away, someone snapped something harshly at him, he didn't pay attention to the words, he was too terrified. Then something was being placed in his mouth, and that too was strapped in, and he started to scream. The sounds were muffled by the gag, but the pain wasn't. Something jabbed, sharp and hot, over and over into his arm. The tears came swiftly now, and it was hard to breathe, with the gag in his mouth.

Then it was over, the burning jabs, but the dull throbbing remained. It started on his forearm, but the sensation of it seemed to jump from fingers to elbow. Then the pressure on his wrists and ankles was gone, and he was being forced into a seated position, where a cold circle was fitted around his neck. He heard it click, and he panicked. It hurt to breathe, the metal was too close around his neck, he couldn't get his fingers under it to tug it away. The gag had been removed with the restraints, but he couldn't really cry, not the way he wanted. He couldn't ibreathe/i. Something was attached to the circle and he was yanked, by a long chain. It choked him, and he was forced along, with the strange man-creature that held the other end of the chain. He pulled the boy sometimes, impatiently, but his legs were numb and his feet hurt to walk on, and he simply couldn't move fast enough. The hallway he was led down was long and grey and dark. He hated it. The man paused outside a door, and pressed something against a dark square, before the door opened and he was yanked roughly inside.

There was a cage, in the center of the room, big, like the tiger cage he'd seen at the zoo when his parents had taken them. The thought of his parents had him crying again, crying for them, for his brother, his sister. "Shut up!" snapped a voice, from behind the frightening blue skin. The watery eyed man pulled it down and the boy almost fell over. There was a mouth under there, thin and angry and cruel. He understood the English words well enough, but he couldn't comply with the order. He didn't want to go in the cage. There were three sides of bars, and one of the same cold concrete as the floor. There was nothing in the cage, nothing at all. He screamed as the man (it had to be a man), bodily lifted him and opened the cage door all but throwing him inside, and attaching the end of the chain that wasn't fastened to the metal circle on his neck to one of the bars. He crawled up to the bar

. "Olani ipam ol," he sobbed out, "Please," he added, using one of the few English words he could remember, but the man pulled out a thick wooden bar from his pocket and jabbed his fingers, bruising them, and he reached it through the bars and jammed it against his ribs, into his stomach, and he stumbled away, holding his hurt sides and fingers, trying to get away from the bars, from anything that could stick through them.

The door opened again, and the boy tensed, on his knees, staring at the newcomer. She looked scary, like the pictures of the sharks in the book his brother had given him for his birthday. She grinned, and he started crying louder. Her grin turned into a scowl, and she too, told him to shut up. He couldn't. She grabbed ahold of the chain that was still attached to the collar and yanked. It closed, tight on his throat and he only barely managed to get his hands out in time to avoid smashing his face to the floor. He screamed and she yanked the chain again, cutting off his air. "I told you to i shut. up. /i" she hissed, and he tried, gasping on the floor. She nodded to the man, and both of them swept out of the room, still talking, but he wasn't listening.

He heard the door open again, some time later, but he couldn't manage to stay his tears. He was frightened, he was hurt, he wanted to go ihome/i.

He ignored everything that was happening outside the cage, until, almost suddenly, someone was in the cage with him. He tensed, trying to hold very still, but the hand was cool, and soft, and the woman didn't seem to mind that he was crying. Her voice was nice and soothing too. He tried to calm down for her, to understand what she was saying. He was learning English, or he had been. He had no trouble understanding it, but getting the words right was hard. There were less of them, and in a strange order most of the time, and many of the words were smaller too. It was hard to remember all the rules when he had to speak it. She called him baby. He wanted his mother. "Salaman," he murmured. She didn't understand him. He whispered another word he knew in English. "Mama." She talked quietly to him for a long time. He didn't notice when he fell asleep.

But he was alone when he woke up, though he didn't stay that way for long. A woman, not as nice looking as Mary, came in and shoved a small plate through a slot in the cage. He was hungry, he thought, and carefully went for the food. She watched him carefully, which frightened him. He didn't want to get close to the bars again. He looked at the food she'd given him. Toasted bread. A few apple slices. It wasn't very much, and the toast was dry, but he ate it. He was thirsty, but didn't know how to ask for a drink. And the woman didn't seem to want to help him anyway. She reached a metal claw into the cage, sending him reeling backward in a slight panic, remembering the wooden rod from yesterday, but all she did was use it to bring the plate back out. She made a few notes in a small pad, and left.

He was alone again, this time, until Mary returned, looking a bit…well he wasn't sure exactly. She didn't look exactly happy, but she did smile when she saw him, and wasted no time getting in the cage. She didn't touch him as much today, but she stayed for a lot longer.

Mary was very nice, he thought. She gave him a picture of her and her son, Dean. Dean looked nice too. He didn't have wings. Neither he nor Mary did. They were like his parents. At least, he'd never seen his parents wings. His brother had always said that they were special, the children, for their wings. His brother and sister though, knew how to hide their wings. And they did, most of the time. He was supposed to learn once his baby feathers fell out and he had proper feathers. Flight feathers. His brother said that not everyone had wings, that their parents didn't, that the people that came over sometimes, when the children had to stay out of sight didn't have them, that they wouldn't understand how special they were. He'd believed his brother. But Mary and Dean didn't have them. None of the people he'd seen today had wings. Perhaps…perhaps his brother had been wrong, and it wasn't special. Perhaps it was strange. Mary said that Dean would like them though, and she said his wings were pretty. She called him Angel.

She also started teaching him how to speak English properly, though he didn't think he was that good at it. When she praised him though, his wings fluffed proudly. He couldn't help it. He wanted to make Mary happy. Someone—the woman that had brought breakfast, that Mary called Bela, brought them both food at one point, though she made a sneering comment to Mary about not expecting that sort of treatment every day. She was to feed the monster, not Mary. He wasn't sure who the monster was supposed to be, but he didn't know how to ask Mary, and he certainly wasn't going to ask the angry lady. She frightened him. Everyone here did, except for Mary. She ate her food, and he ate his. His food looked very different than hers. He had a tasteless sort of mush. He didn't like it much. Mary called it oatmeal.

He was sad when she left, the door sealing shut. Still, she had let him keep the picture, so he kept it close and stared at it, touching her face. It wasn't as good as having her here. But it was also less scary when Bela came back with more of the mush and another piece of toast. "We don't know what you eat yet," she said. "so you better get used to it." He made a face, though he didn't mean to. She ignored him. "Eat," she said. "I want to go home."

"Olani Gil ol oiad salman abai," he muttered.

"I don't speak your freaky language," she snapped. He flinched. He managed to eat everything. "Salman," he demanded. "Salman Bela." It was her turn to flinch.

"Listen monster," she hissed, "You do not say my name. I don't care how little and cute you are, I don't trust you and I don't like you. Just do what I say and don't bloody talk to me." He swallowed and backed away as she reached the claw inside. He wasn't fast enough, and she managed to get his foot, squeezing it, and making him cry out before she said, "oops," without sounding like she meant it, and grabbing the bowl instead. He cradled his foot in his hands. It was red where she'd pressed it. He curled up into a ball again. He wanted to go home.

He was woken by a sharp tug to the chain. "Wakey, wakey," said the shark-woman that seemed to like hurting him. "We're going to do some tests today." He was already gasping and shaking. She didn't seem to care. "Come here." The woman didn't seem to care that he started to come, because she grabbed the chain and yanked it hard, sending him crashing to the floor. "What are you doing?" she asked. "I thought I told you to come here." She pulled the chain again, dragging him toward her, making it impossible to get to his feet and walk. He was already in tears by the time she dragged him to the door. She unlocked the cage and then jerked him out. She clipped a new chain onto his collar and unclipped the one that he had been wearing. Apparently, there'd be two. One for leaving, and one for staying. Still, he was glad to leave. He had to go to the bathroom very badly.

He was pulled down that horrible, frightening hallway again, and into the big white room. He was divested of the thin cotton trousers he was wearing and forced to squat over a metal pail. "Now, whatever you are," she said, "we'll take urine and fecal samples." He had no idea what she was talking about, but she seemed to want him to go to the bathroom. He'd prefer a toilet, but this seemed to be all she was willing to let him have. It was with relief that he released his bowels (he wasn't a baby, he knew how to properly go to the bathroom). But she didn't seem inclined to give him anything to clean himself with. "Clean?" he asked. He knew that word. It was probably the wrong one, but hopefully she'd get the idea.

"You're an animal," she'd sniffed. "Why should you need to clean yourself?"

"Clean," he repeated, not a question this time.

"Very well," she said. He'd learn to come to hate and fear that tone in her voice, that playful lilt that sounded almost girlish. It hid something much darker.

He was dragged then, to a door, and into a cold room with a post in the middle. The chain was clicked onto a ring on the post, and he had no idea how this was supposed to help him get clean. Then the water started. It was freezing, and there was so imuch/i of it. It stung and the pressure of it on his back sent him smashing into the pole. The water changed direction, and he was jerked backwards. Then everything went black.

He woke in his cage again, neck and heat throbbing, skin red, though dry now, back in the same thin cotton trousers. Apparently, they hadn't attempted to find a shirt to fit his wings. He'd had a few, had even been wearing one when he was captured, shirts that he put on front first, that zipped or tied or buttoned in the back. He supposed there was no one to help him now, but it was still cold. And his neck hurt badly. He could barely move. So he lay, shivering, and aching, not even able to look up when the door opened.

Mary blanched when she saw the little boy that day. His hair was wet, his skin red. He looked like he was in agony. She opened the cage and he stirred, weakly. "Hey Angel," she said. "Don't move okay?" She walked over and settled next to him. "I'm going to rub your neck a bit," she warned. "They shouldn't have done that." She swallowed. She knew about the Post of course, but that wasn't usually how they ibathed/i the monsters. It was a punishment. As it was, it was lucky the boy hadn't died or snapped his neck. She hummed softly, as she carefully kneaded the child's abused neck and shoulders. When he was able to sit up, she smiled. Angel didn't return it, but he didn't look afraid of her either. "I brought you some things," she said. "You can't keep all of it, but some of it you can. If you're quiet about it." She put a finger to his lips, and he nodded gingerly, wincing. She kicked herself internally. "Don't nod," she said. "If you understand me, or agree, say 'yes,' if you don't agree, say 'no.'"

"Yes," he said, softly. She smoothed his wet hair back from his forehead.

"There you go, baby."

"Angel," he hummed.

"Alright. Angel." She smiled. "Baby is what I call Dean sometimes." Angel swallowed.

"No," he said carefully. "Dean…um. Angel not baby."

"You'd say, 'I am not a baby," she corrected, and the boy repeated it, to a delighted smile from Mary.

"Good. Now, get comfortable." He didn't move. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes."

"Right." She didn't quite believe him, but she didn't push it. "Now. This book is called 'Goodnight Moon.'" He glanced up at her, not moving his neck.

"No cheese." Mary laughed.

"No. There is no cheese on the moon. But this book isn't about cheese on the moon. Do you want me to read it?"

"Yes," he said.

So Mary made herself comfortable (might as well try to set an example) and started reading the book. She read it slowly, so Angel could understand everything, with her finger tracing along the line so she didn't lose her place. And so Angel could follow along. When she finished, it looked like he was about to cry. She was about to ask what was wrong, but he flipped it to the beginning.

"Again, please," he said.

"Can you read it again please," she corrected gently, though to be fair, there is no way Dean would have said 'please' at all. Angel repeated her dutifully, and Mary read the book through once more. And a third time. They were half-way through the fourth read when Bela came in with the dry toast and apple slices again.

"He'll need something besides that you know," said Mary disapprovingly.

"This is fine," she said. "He's getting all the nutrients he needs with this, the oatmeal, and the stew." Angel let Mary bring the food to him, and return the tray. He didn't want to get caught by the claw again.

"Keep please?" he asked, after the book was over.

"Say, 'can I keep the book please,'" said Mary, and Angel repeated it. He also pointed to the word 'moon,' and said "Geraa." Mary blinked, and repeated it back.

"No," said Angel, pointing again to the word moon and saying "Geraa." This time, Mary said it right.

"Geraa means moon?" she asked, cautiously.

"Yes." Fascinating.

"What language is it?" Angel shrugged. "You don't know?"

"No," he said. "We talk it."

"You speak it."

"Yes. Speak it." A few tears fell from his eyes. "Salman," he sniffed. "Salman, Mary." She ran her hand over his hair again.

"I don't know what….Salamann," she said slowly. Angel flipped through the book.

"Goodnight," he said slowly. "House. Salmnn." Mary licked her lips.

"I'm sorry, Angel," she said quietly. "You can't. It's dangerous." Dangerous for him? Or for humans? She didn't know. But she couldn't help him go home. He bent his head carefully, shoulders shaking. Mary felt herself starting to tear up too. God. What had possessed them to bring a child here?

"Oh," she said, forcing cheer into her voice. "I forgot, I have some more things!" She reached into the bag she'd brought and pulled out a few more pictures. "I have a picture of me," she said, showing him, "I took two, so you can keep it, and here is one of Dean again, at Halloween. He went as a cowboy. And one from the Halloween before last when he went as a cow." She laughed. "This year, he wants to go as a 'moon guy.'" Angel looked confused. "He means an astronaut. Someone who really ican/i go up in a spaceship to go to the moon." The boy looked dubious, and she smiled. "I'll bring a book about space next time." Well, he had had a book about the sea. It might be nice to see the book about space too. "More pictures," she said. "Here's my husband, John." She had several more pictures to show him, and told him he could keep two. He chose the photo of Mary by herself, and the one of Dean in his cowboy outfit. Angel had dressed up for Halloween too, he thought. This most recent one anyway. He'd been a sailor. It had been fun, and he had been allowed to go to town. No one thought it was weird he had wings, and he saw such istrange/i things. But he'd seen a girl with a white robe and sparkly hoop over her head and white wings that were glittery and bigger than his, though they didn't move so well, and a boy dressed like a pumpkin with a face. Or someone called Jack Lanern, according to his sister, but that was mostly confusing. He hoped that if he could see Dean's cowboy picture, he could remember about his own Halloween.

Before she left, Angel wanted to read the book again. "One word. Slow," he said. She started to read it again, and this time, as she read each word, he repeated it, studying the words with intensity. She was surprised, but rather impressed. Hopefully, if he kept this up, Lilith would see the merit in teaching Angel. She tore out a piece of paper from her notebook, and carefully wrote out the English alphabet, going over each, upper, and lower case with Angel. She wrote his name, and her name as well, and then added John and Dean for good measure. "You can practice," she said. "See if you can know some of the letters when I get back." He had nodded seriously, and went started immediately studying the letters.

Her report took a long time that day. She kept getting distracted. However, once it was done, she turned it in, managed to avoid being kept by Lilith, and left the facility.

John didn't know exactly what she did. And she was glad of that, usually. It would be far too complicated to explain about monsters. But right now, it was hard. She didn't have anyone to talk to about Angel, not really. She had only known the child for a few days, but it was harder and harder to leave him each time.

Still, she smiled when she walked in the door, scooping up Dean who had waited by the window for when she pulled up and came pounding over to meet her at the door, launching himself in the air for a hug. He did the same to John sometimes, but her husband didn't leave the house as much. He worked as a freelance mechanic out of their garage and backyard sometimes, but they didn't usually have more than three or so cars he was working on at any given time. So in the mornings, she drove Dean to daycare, and then off to work, John worked on the cars, until lunchtime, when Dean carpooled home, John fed him, and sent him off to his friend Patrick's house for a few hours to get some more work done. Patrick's mother was quite nice about it, not even asking to be paid. It worked out well for them, because when she wanted a date night, she'd just drop Patrick off at the Winchester's and get a free night of babysitting.

"Mrs Saint James has a ipool/i" Dean informed her. "It's got water innit an' everythin'!"

"Oh really," she said, amused, glancing at John who raised his eyebrows. Apparently, this pool was all he'd been hearing about all day.

"Really," said Dean adamantly. "An' I couldn't swim innit today 'cause I didn't have floaties an' Patrick only has his ones, but daddy says I can swim tomorrow, can I?" Mary ruffled his hair and put him down.

"Well, if Daddy says you can," she said, amused.

"He did," Dean assured her, "But only if you said yes." He looked rather pleased with himself for pulling this off. John rolled his eyes.

"Why don't you get washed up for dinner," she said.

"I am!" he announced. "I did the salads. I don't like salads," he added. "I like ice cream. We used the same bowls. Can I have ice cream?"

"After dinner, if we have any," she said. This seemed to satisfy Dean and he trotted back to the kitchen to stand on the chair he was using to help 'make' the salads. Mostly he was just smashing lettuce into a bowl and trying to sneakily take tomatoes out of his bowl and put it in the other two. It wasn't effective. Or as sneaky as he clearly thought he was being. By the time the pasta was re-heated and Dean was at his place at the table, both Mary and John had a surplus of tomatoes, but Dean still had a few in his bowl. John was far sneakier about putting tomatoes in Dean's bowl than Dean was taking them out of it.

Dean kept them entertained throughout dinner telling them about Tommy Webber and Andrew Thomas' fight, because they weren't talking right now, it meant that Dean was currently the best friend of both of them, which he thought was brilliant, because as long as he didn't hog the blocks like Tommy Webber had which is what caused the fight, he got to play with the blocks iand/i with the best play-house costumes (including the hat with the peacock feathers) which in his mind, made him hopeful that Tommy and Andrew never made up. "But they prob'ly will," he said, a little mournfully. "They always do. An' then Tommy gets the hat." He looked like this was a travesty. Or the end of the world. Which, for an almost four year old, it probably was. It was, after all, an awfully big hat.

Mary sang 'California Girls' by the Beach Boys to get Dean to go to sleep that night. She'd never been good at kids songs or lullabys, so she just went with the songs that she liked. Beatles, Beach boys, Kinks. She was glad he didn't understand most of what the lyrics meant though.

Returning downstairs, John had poured them both a glass of wine. "Hello, wife," he grinned.

"Hello, husband," she replied, giving him a soft kiss on the cheek and taking the wine. She turned to go sit on the couch and he grabbed her about the waist, gently pulling her close.

"I feel like I never see you," he murmured, kissing her jaw just under her ear. She hummed, and he kissed a line down her jaw, onto her neck, and she shivered, letting him sway her gently from foot to foot as he hummed a song that she thought was meant to be 'Simple Man,' but honestly, it was sort of hard to tell.

She leaned back against him and closed her eyes, just reveling in the closeness of her husband. Soon though, he was leading her to the couch, and they were cuddled up on it while American Idol played quietly on the television. She leaned up and kissed his cheek, beard prickling her slightly, and she giggled. "Don't know who you lost a bet with," she said, "But that has igot/i to go. You trying to outdo Bobby?" John rolled his eyes. His business partner looked like he'd been forty since he was twenty, and he'd probably look forty till he was sixty. The beard wasn't helpful really.

"Didn't lose anything," he said. "I kind of like it." The wine was gone, glasses on the table and he pressed his mouth to her cheek, hands on her stomach and she laughed, wriggling. "Ticklish, Mary?" he asked, teasing.

"God, don't you dare," she said.

"Good try," he said. "But I'm John, not God." And he rubbed his bearded cheek against her neck, fingers brushing her shirt up to slide against her sensitive ribs. She almost gave a tiny shriek as she tried to get away, but he captured the sound with his mouth, humor giving way slightly to just kissing. She curled up against his side them, head on his shoulder as they absently watched people who said they were great at singing find out that despite their delusions, they were terrible, and the jerky Englishman shattered their dreams. John's hand gently stroked her side, not intent on tickling this time. Mary was almost asleep by the time the show was over, and she let John rouse her enough to get ready for bed, and crawl in.

"Love you John," she murmured. She heard his acknowledgment, though not his assurance that he loved her too. She didn't need to hear the words though, she felt his arm curl around her, warm and strong and safe, and she drifted off to sleep.

**Enochian is HARD. And a lot of sites have different spellings and there are a LOT of words that can mean the same thing. I found two for 'house' which I used to mean 'home': Salman and Salamann. So. If I use them interchangeably, I am sorry. I try not to, but there will be notes at the bottom if there is Enochian in the story. **

**If you see issues with the Enochian, blame the conflicting websites. And also me, I suppose, for not being able to choose just one to go with. I used two in particular, a translator and a dictionary, but honestly…well, it is hugely probably I did it wrong. **

**Bagle: why? **

**Bajileim: Why, for what reason? **

**Canilu: Blood**

**Elasa: You**

**Esiasch: Brother**

**Geraa: Moon**

**Niisa(o) Come away**

**OL: I, myself**

**Salamann: House**

**Bagle nanaeel ol nanaeel oi ol ollog: Why do you do this to me**

**Olani ipam ol: I beg of you**

**Olani gil ol oiad salman abai: I want to go home too**


	3. Positive

Angel woke from a dream about home. About family. He woke crying, with the memory of laughing brown eyes and flaming red hair and splashing in the stream. He wanted to go home. Mary said it was dangerous, but surely it could not be more dangerous than here, than this place. He'd heard his father describe something as a hellhole once. He wasn't entirely sure what that was, but it sounded awful. Like here.

It was still early, he knew that. The automatic lights hadn't come on yet. But there was enough to see by. He could study the alphabet that Mary had left, he could try to read the book. He thought he mostly remembered it. It was helpful that there were little pictures sometimes, to tell you what was new on the page to say goodnight to. He'd never considered saying goodnight to anything but a living creature before. Well. There wasn't anything to say goodnight to in here anyway.

When the shark-woman came in with the pale-eyed man, he panicked. She picked up the chain, and he almost tripped over himself trying to get to the door so she wouldn't yank it again. He wanted his mother to come and get him. This is a mistake. The shark-woman called him monster, but he wasn't scary. She was.

He wasn't fast enough. She yanked the chain and sent him tumbling down, which made his neck burn. He let out a choked yell of pain. That's when the wooden rod that had smashed his fingers a few sleeps previously (probably days. There were no windows, so it was hard to tell), made it's reappearance. It smashed down on his shoulder.

"Be quiet," sneered the man. "You scream, you get hit, you cry, you get hit, you fucking isnivel/i you get hit."

"Do watch your language Alastair," said the lady, calmly, but with a hint of steel in her tone. The man apologized, and that is how Angel learned who was in charge. And the name of the cruel man with the pale eyes.

"Bagle-" he began and was smacked again through the bars.

"English," growled the man, Alistair. "No more of that nonsense language, pet."

Angel shivered. He didn't like how the man called him that. He wasn't a pet. He was a boy. A person.

The door opened and he was dragged out. He was taken to that white room again, to go to the bathroom, and then the pole room. As soon as he was in it, he grabbed hold of the pole, clutching it tight, with both small arms, trying to ignore the laughter of Alistair and the scary shark-woman as the water pounded into his back. It slowed, and he let go, only to have it smash back into him again, before stopping, leaving him dazed and hurting.

They made him put the trousers back on before unclipping him from the post, and dragging him, still wet back to the cage. There was a blanket in there, and he immediately dried himself with it. It was itchy and it smelled bad, like sick, but he managed to dry off.

He supposed it was lucky that they hadn't taken any of the things Mary had given him. He was allowed to keep the book, the photos, the paper. At least, he was so far. Angel was rather frightened they might take them away, like they'd taken him from his home. He wandered around the cage, looking for a place to hide them, but everything was smooth. There was no place.

When Mary came in, looking better than the day before, thought Angel, he was sitting in the middle of the cage, clutching the book to him, the photos and the paper inside it, holding onto it so tightly his knuckles were white, as if someone was going to come and take it away at any moment.

"You alright Angel?" asked the woman, concerned. He nodded slowly, and held out the book. "You wanna read it again?" He nodded again. She was a bit concerned, at his lack of talking, but sat beside him, and was surprised when he pressed himself against her side while she read.

He made her read the story three times in a row, the last time going very slow, so he could repeat every word back. He memorized what each looked like, burning images of the words and letters into his brain. He had never seen his language written down, only spoken it, been born knowing it, though he didn't see anything strange with that, but he did notice that most of the sounds were very similar.

Though English had more of them, and you didn't always have to pronounce every letter. It was difficult.

But the fourth time, he carefully, slowly, went through every page of the book and got (mostly) every word right. Mary wasn't sure if he was memorizing or reading, but either way it was impressive. She thought it might be reading, because he sometimes pronounced the words incorrectly, or substituted his language for the English.

They went over the English alphabet next, until he knew every letter. Mary was more than impressed. The boy was definitely clever. Dean didn't know his letters so well yet, and he'd been practicing. Angel didn't know the song that came with the letters, but he didn't need it either.

Mary saw the bruising on Angel's shoulders, his fingers, his foot. He seemed to bruise easily, this boy.

She wanted to take him home, to keep him safe until he could do it for himself. She knew all of the reasons she could not do that. So she said nothing, and she read that stupid children's book over and over.

He was reading, she found, after writing a few words on the notepad she carried with her, and he carefully sounded each out, glancing up at her after every word. She wondered if it had anything to do with what he was, that he learned to read in just a few days.

Angel wasn't really aware he'd done anything spectacular. He'd never learned a language before, he just _knew_ it. What's more, he was aware of that about himself. He was born with the knowledge there, under his skin, a full vocabulary, if not a full understanding. He'd never seen the words written in his language, or heard it named, but he and his siblings all spoke it. His parents did not, and they seemed concerned that his older siblings had taught him a language they'd made up, but…they had been born knowing it too. It had been his brother and sister, teasing eyes and firey hair, fading too quickly from his memory, that had taught him a few words of English. They hadn't really found it necessary. They could understand him, interpret, and he understood English perfectly, though he recognized it as a different language. Now that he had a reason to learn it, with a teacher that needed him to speak in a language she could understand, he applied himself.

"Hard….not very," he said, carefully. She corrected his syntax, but she was always doing that. "It…is not…very hard," he said slowly, trying to remember the order of the words. It was the order that was difficult to remember, not the words themselves. He supposed that would get better with time. He hoped it would.

The rest of the month past quickly for Mary, and almost agonizingly slowly for Angel. He woke early every day, either from dreams (the dreams were often good, the waking, bad), or from Lilith, as he learned the shark-lady was called (he preferred shark-woman), or Alistair yanking on the chain around his neck to force him to the front of the cage where they exchanged chains, and dragged him to the cold white room, where he was allowed to use the bathroom (chamber pot), the one time a day he was allowed to do it, and to the post room, where he had to hold the pole tightly, though his arms didn't reach the whole way around, to let the painful water slam against his back. And sometimes, when they stopped the water and he let go, the water would start again, which would smack him into the post, or the wall, which always ended up knocking him out and giving him what Mary called 'whiplash,' with an angry look on her face. When he remembered not to let go, sometimes, he would feel a different sting as Alistair used the wooden rod (or sometimes metal) to smack his hands or his back or his legs to force him to let go, while he made a horrible joke about the post. Angel didn't know what he meant, but he was sure it was bad. He used the word 'fuck' which the first time had made Lilith chide him on his language, but usually, she just gave that cold, dead-eyed shark-smile.

After the bathroom and shower, he'd be put into his wet cotton trousers again and dragged back to the cage, where cold toast, often burned or stale, and some sort of fruit, usually apple slices, waited for him. Sometimes, the apples had peanut butter on them, which was always good, and filled him up more than they did without the sticky substance. He learned, after the first day, to not use the blanket to dry off with. It only made it smell worse, and it never dried the whole way, and it was _cold_ in the cage at night.

He didn't like the wet trousers though, they were itchy and they stuck to his skin and made him cold. Usually, he just took them off before he ate breakfast, and tried to dry himself with his hands before he put them back on, still uncomfortable, but better than before.

And then it was waiting for Mary to come. He would read Goodnight Moon, and practice letters, and look at the photos, until she came in the door. She always smiled at him, and now, he smiled back, feathers ruffling slightly every time. They were almost always wet for most of the day, which was horrible, because they were heavy and they smelled weird when they dried.

Three days after the blanket made it's first appearance, Mary noted that the bruises, which had been livid the day previous, were nearly gone. Angel though, appeared wan and listless, and a little bit green even. She glanced at the rather foul smelling blanket, and had a rather horrible feeling she knew what had happened.

After leaving Angel that day, she stalked to Lilith's office. "Lilith," she said, firmly, even if her boss frightened her a little, "I want to wash the blanket. Or give him a good one, that one's got sick all over it. It was what, dunked in water to get the vomit off?"

Lilith grinned. "We are testing his limits," she said. "He's in a secure environment, we need to know how illness can affect him."

"Then give him a vaccine," said Mary. "This…this is like the settlers giving the natives smallpox blankets. It is cruel and verging on actual evil." Lilith had just laughed. Mary didn't like that. She continued. "And you have to let him use a proper bathroom," she said. "He doesn't need those…power wash baths every day, in fact, it's probably doing more harm than good."

"Are you telling me how to do my job?" Right. Her voice was dangerous now.

"No," said Mary. "But I am suggesting we don't try to kill him."

"It's an animal," said Lilith. "A monster. It does not need germ-free blankets or toilets."

Mary wanted to chuck Lilith's antique silver chalice at her head. "Even so. We treat the adults with more respect that this little boy. We can teach him. Punish him when you must, but…the Post is punishment. And he hasn't done anything. Do what tests you must but…give him some time in between. Otherwise, how can you trust your results? Or mine," she added. "I've written up my reports, but it is hard to get a feel on his 'usual' behavior when he isn't allowed to act naturally." It was a good argument, and even Lilith had to see its sense. Still. She did not like Mary.

"Do what you want, then," she said, "And get out," she said lazily, waving her hand at the other blonde.

"I have to make a private call."

The next time Mary came to see Angel, she had a new, clean blanket (more of a comforter), a child's training toilet, and a roll of toilet paper. "You know how to use a toilet?" she asked him, kindly.

He looked at the chair in distaste. "Green," he said. "An' blue. Why? An' for babies," he added, a little imperiously. "Knowing how to big….potty." Toilet. Wasn't that the word she'd used. Anyway. It hardly mattered. It wasn't a word that translated from his usual language. Mary sighed.

"I know it's a bit childish, and I thought you might be potty trained," oh, so you _could_ use the word potty. He'd thought so, "because Dean has been for a bit more than a year now, but I had to make sure. And I'm sorry you think it's babyish, but…it's the best I can do. Lilith doesn't want you using the bathrooms here." She didn't want this little monster to meet any of the older ones. Or visa versa. "So for now, at least, use this. I'll take care of the bowl when I get here in the morning, and before I leave at night. And see if we can't get a drain in here somewhere." Angel just stared, then shrugged, petting the comforter she'd given him. "Oh!" he jerked, looking up at her. "And I brought something else, since you've gotten so good at reading already." She smiled broadly, and handed him a book. He studied it for a long moment.

"Pah-oh-keh-eh-t….Pah-oh-ket," he glanced up at her.

"Pocket," she corrected.

"Pocket," repeated, "English," (he knew that word very well by now), "D-eye-kuh-ti-eye-oh-nary," he tried. That was a hard one.

"Dictionary," said Mary. "The first I is a soft 'i' remember, we talked about it? It doesn't make an 'eye' sound, it makes an 'ih,' sound." He nodded.

"Dictionary. Pocket English Dictionary." He froze, realizing what it was, and looked up. "Really?" he asked. "Words…all words, for me?"

"Well, not all of them," she said. "It's only a small dictionary. Meant to be carried around. The really big ones you can hardly lift! This one is light and little. Like you. It has the important words in it."

"Like me?" he asked, looking up at her shyly through thick lashes.

Mary smiled and ruffled his hair. "Like you, Angel." That was the first time she heard him laugh. It warmed her just as much as when Dean did it, only…it felt so much more important this time. Angel wouldn't have much to laugh about. She hoped he could hold onto this memory.

The month wore on. He asked about home less and less, and she thought he was starting to understand that he wouldn't leave here. He smiled whenever she came in, and about a week before the end of the month, proudly showed her his new trousers. "I growing. Growed," he corrected himself. He was still wrong, but he was coming along very quickly.

"Grew," she said. "Past tense of grow is grew." He nodded seriously.

"I grew," he said carefully. He was always so careful, so…exact. She had to wonder if it is how he always was, or if it was a factor of whatever conditioning Alistair did that left him in bruises for three or four days at a time. Still, she was impressed by how quickly he healed. Even the time the blanket had made him sick, he'd only been achy and nauseous for about a day, and he hadn't thrown up at all. She had noticed that when it came to anything but grammar, he never made the same mistake twice. And now…he was making the same general mistakes with his words that all three-year-olds made. He didn't sound like he was trying to learn a foreign language anymore. It was just…English now.

Lilith came to see him, apparently for the first time in weeks, on the last day of the month. "Mary says you've been doing well." Angel stared down at his feet. "Answer!" she bit out.

"Yes," he said, almost squeaking.

"Yes what?" she demanded.

"Yes….Lilith?" he questioned.

"You will call me Miss Lilith, am I understood?"

"Yes. Um. Miss Lilith." Shark-woman, he added, in his head.

"Now," she said. "Show me what you have learned."

Angel was quite clearly terrified of Lilith, and he stumbled his way through Goodnight Moon and the ABC's, but when Lilith wrote down words on the whiteboard she'd brought, he read them perfectly..

Either he'd gotten control of his nerves or he had to concentrate harder with things he was less comfortable with, but in the end, Mary decided, it didn't matter. It was enough. Lilith agreed to hold off on hurting the boy. Well. On 'physical tests,' for the time being. Until he was stronger, she said, and

Mary knew she'd have to be okay with that.

Angel looked rather pleased with himself when Lilith left, and Mary rumpled his hair. He ducked away, flushing, though his feathers puffed out a bit, and his smile widened, he didn't laugh.

He was allowed different books now, never more than two at a time, aside from 'Goodnight Moon' and the dictionary. Lilith told Mary to watch giving him things, that she couldn't do that. He wasn't her son and he wasn't her property. Technically, said Lilith, smugly, everything the creature owned belonged to her, not it, and not Mary.

Angel found that, as time passed, he missed home. He missed it a lot. But he hated this place less too. The blanket Mary had given him was very nice and comfortable and warm. They let him use the training toilet Mary brought, which was a bit gross, but she did clean it. Well, sometimes Bela did, especially if he'd eaten something different, which he didn't put too much thought into. It was cleaned away only minutes after it was used, and that was all he cared about. He took baths now, instead of showers at the post. He was brought (still painfully) to a different white room with a large bucket of water (usually cold), and he was allowed to clean himself without getting his wings wet every day. They looked better for it too, when he was allowed to groom them himself, with his fingers. He really needed oils and things to do it right, but he still had new feathers, so he didn't make them himself, like his brother had. Once a week, before his bath, they made him get weighed and measured, and they took all sorts of time checking his eyes and ears. Sometimes they hurt him, and shot needles in him, and sometimes they did it the other way and took blood ifrom/i him, and those were his least favorite days.

One day, Mary brought something special. "You can't keep it," she said. "But it'll take a picture. And you can keep _that_, alright?" He had been fascinated, and nodded. She told him to smile, which he didn't understand, but he tried anyway, and she clicked a button. There was a flash of light, and when he was still blinking away the bright spots, he noticed her shaking out a piece of paper. She showed him a clearing image. It was a little boy, with dark hair and blue eyes, grimacing a bit, and grey fluffy wings poofed out, startled, on either side of him. It took him a second to get that it was him, that this was a picture of _him_. He'd never had a photo of himself before. He thought he'd seen his reflection sometimes, but now he knew for sure. He smiled broadly at Mary, who laughed. "Why couldn't you do that for the photo?" She sat down and patted her lap. After a moments hesitation, he sat down in it. She held the camera out, facing them. "Smile for real this time," she said, and clicked the button. Now he was well and truly blinded, and had to rub his eyes frantically for several minutes before he managed to blink his vision clear again. Mary showed him the picture. There she was, a bit out of frame, but he could still see her, all but the top corner of her head, holding him, a slightly better smile than the first one. He didn't see much of his body, just his face and shoulders and a bit of his wing. You could see the top of Mary's arm though, and see that it was curled around him. Like he was something worth protecting.

"I keep them," he stated. She nodded, serious as he usually was.

"Yes," she said. "You can." Mary loved his smiles just as much as she loved Dean's, or John's. She hoarded them jealously, each and every one.

Sometimes John accused her of being distracted, to which she'd vaguely respond, "It's just work stuff John. You don't have to worry about it." He did anyway, she could tell.

She couldn't get Angel out of her mind, and one day, when Dean asked for his bedtime story, she smiled and kissed his forehead. "How about, I tell you a story of Angel?" she asked. Dean made a face.

"Angel?" he asked. "Sounds fruity."

Mary burst out laughing. "Where did you hear that term?"

"Dad," he said, calmly. "I was tellin' him 'bout the hat with the feathers at daycare, an' how now there's a snake with feathers too an' some of them are sparkly, an' all of it's pink an' he said it sounds fruity. I tol' him it was a snake, not fruit, but he said that wasn't what he meaned an' then he didn't esplain what he meaned anyways. How's a snake with feathers fruity?" Mary sighed. God save her from the lack of filter on John Winchester.

"I think…I think you mean a boa," she started.

"Yeah," said Dean, bouncing a bit. "A boa 'sticker, an' it's got feathers." Mary smiled.

"A boa is a bit of…well it's sort of silly really. It's a long, feathery thing that women sometimes where to look classy. A boa constrictor is a kind of snake that squeezes you really hard. They aren't the same thing. Your father meant fruity to mean…girly." Dean frowned, piecing this information together.

"He sounded…like he didn't like it," he said. "Does he not like girly?"

"Not when it's for boys. Your daddy is very silly sometimes. If you like the boa and the hat you can wear them, okay? It's not…fruity, as your dad says. Or silly. Unless you want it to be, but you can make anything silly if you want." She smiled. Dean nodded solemnly, but he clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

"So…Angel?" he asked, laying down and wriggling to get comfortable.

"Angel," she said, "was a little boy with great lovely wings." Dean gasped. "Yes," said Mary, "Great wings, and he could fly and soar with the birds all day long. But he was lonely, because he didn't have a family. 'I must have come from somewhere,' he said,"

"Yeah, 'cause of he's gotta have a mommy an' daddy," said Dean.

"Yes, he has to, doesn't he," said Mary, a little thoughtfully. "And this Angel, he decided that he liked flying , and talking to the birds, but he wanted to find his proper family. So he flew to the nearby town to see if his family lived there. He landed in the center of the square."

"Did people pay him?"

"Why would they do that?"

"'Cause of when people stand in the square people give 'em money."

"Um. I guess they do, but mostly those people are asking for it, or they are doing tricks or playing music or something. People don't just give other people standing around money."

"Oh. Well, he was flyin'. That's a trick."

"They didn't give him money. They were scared of him. He was only a little boy, but they were scared because they'd never seen a little boy with wings. They heard that monsters lived in the mountains and thought the boy was one of them."

Dean scoffed. "That's silly. He's only a flyin' boy."

"That's right," agreed Mary. "But they were a lot bigger than he was, and they captured him up, and hid him away to find out what he was. All they found out was that he was very smart, and sort of scared, and he just wanted to go home. He missed the birds and the sky and flying, because he wasn't allowed to do it anymore. One day, when he was crying,"

"Why was he cryin'?"

"Because he was lonely," said Mary. "And sometimes the people who were trying to learn from him, hurt him instead."

"On purpose?"

Mary hesitated before replying, "no, of course not. They didn't understand what might hurt him though. So he was crying when the caretaker's son,"

"Dean!" he proclaimed.

Mary laughed and tickled his tummy, "yes, Dean," oh to have the self-importance of a three year old, "walked by and found the room where Angel was. He snuck inside and stared at the winged boy. 'Hello,' He said. 'I'm Dean.'" Angel sniffed and stopped crying. 'Hello Dean,'" he said. 'Are you stuck too?' Dean said, 'no, I'm not, but why are you?' 'I don't know,' said Angel. 'I am only small.' And Dean, that clever boy," –here Dean giggled a little,-"knew that he could help. 'I will get you out,' he decided, and that night, with a key in hand, he unlocked Angel's cage and helped the winged boy out. 'I will show you the stars,' said Angel, and he took Dean's hand and the two of them flew up, up, up…And a pack of stars zooming by found them, and they laughed and played, and Angel knew he'd found his family. The end."

Dean smiled sleepily. "Dancin' in the stars. Good for Angel. An' Dean."

Angel at work fueled her stories of Angel at night, and at work, he always liked to hear what Dean had said or done. He liked to hear the stories too, but she didn't tell them often to Angel. She read other stories to him. Fairy tales and myths of all sorts—he seemed to like those the best, and sometimes stories of far off lands—he seemed to like Narnia—but she stayed away from stories that had too much magic or seemed to be part of the world they lived in. If there were talking animals, or inanimate objects, that was fine—but stories like Harry Potter or Charlie Bone were dangerous. Children with power, or who were different eventually overcoming….she would have liked to tell him such stories, but she knew Lilith would see it as subversive. Dangerous. So she refrained.

Angel also liked history, she found, so she started teaching him that too. It was early, really to teach him much besides basics of reading and writing, but he picked everything up fast, and he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. His current book to read was one of the Narnia ones—The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and he seemed fascinated by an eternal winter and magic portals to take you to far off lands. He refused to let Mary help with the reading of the book, but he was getting better and better at doing it himself. He did let her help with the history though. He wanted to know about kings and queens right now, and the war that was mentioned in the book, so Mary had brushed up on mediaeval royalty as well as World War II and Angel seemed by turns delighted and horrified by the tales. She tried to water it down a bit, to keep it appropriate for a three year old. If it were Dean, it would be easy to do it, but Angel…it was easy to forget he was only three. Much of the time, he seemed a lot older.

Dean requested Angel stories almost nightly now. Usually, it involved Dean saving Angel, but one day, Dean stopped her before she began and requested that Angel save Dean. "It all'ays happens t'other way 'round," he complained. "Angel is cool. He doesn't hafta be all'ays stuck." Mary was a bit nonplussed by that, but she did manage to have Dean stuck in a hole—because he'd promised to get his friend's ball back, and he said he'd get in instead of the friend—but once the ball was out, Dean was stuck and his friend ("Patrick?" asked Dean. "Yes, alright, Patrick," agreed Mary. "Yeah," Dean said.

"Patrick would definitely drop his ball an' make me get it.") couldn't get him out again. Both boys had been scared because of the thunderstorm, but the boy with the wings appeared, having heard their cries and flew down into the hole to get Dean out, and all three boys had played with the ball together. And Angel could always get it if it fell into the hole or they threw it too high. Dean had liked that one, and after that, Mary alternated who was saving whom. And many times, the boys ended up saving each other.

John sometimes muttered darkly about Dean's penchant for dressing up and playing house, but Mary would kiss him on the cheek and say that he spends just as much time in the garage with John than in a play kitchen at daycare, and if he knows how to fix a car and bake some cookies then that's all the better. He protested sometimes about the dresses and hats that the daycare instructor showed him pictures of sometimes, but Mary would start to get annoyed at that point. "John's he's three. He plays with trucks and guns too. He plays at _crashing_ trucks and he plays cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians and you don't see me complaining that he's going to grow up to be a horse thief or a murderer. He's playing. Let him be. If you keep trying to get him to stop playing he won't get a chance to see who he can be." She patted his cheek, or sometimes hit him in the arm, depending on how much John had annoyed her. "And you'd better love him even if he does decide he wants to wear a dress to prom or you'll have to find yourself somewhere else to sleep." That usually shut him up.

It had been almost three months since she'd first seen Angel, lying quivering and hurt in the center of the cage. She was growing concerned that he was forgetting what had come before. He'd used to talk sometimes, haltingly, of a brother with laughing eyes and a sister with fire for hair, but he never mentioned them anymore. She'd asked, recently, and he'd shrugged, and said it was hard to see them, or remember. He didn't remember grass or sun or water in a stream, so she told him stories about them so he'd remember, and he seemed to enjoy them, but Mary didn't think he really remembered them much at all.

So she was growing concerned. However, that concern was forgotten rather abruptly at the end of August, when she realized that she had missed her period two months running and did a pregnancy test.

It came back positive.


	4. Opposites

**Sorry for mistakes in formatting. No idea what happened that last time...Lets try again!**

Neither Angel nor Dean fully understood what it meant that Mary was going to have a baby. Dean understood that he'd have a little brother or sister, and he was already choosing names. He was playing hard for Batman or Awesome Ranger, because, Mary thought, he thought that was one of the power rangers. Granted, for all she'd seen of the show, it could be. She'd thought they were named for their colors though. But Dean had just learned the word 'Awesome,' and he said it all the time. Hopefully he would grow out of it.

Angel had even less of an idea about what it meant. He stared suspiciously at her stomach, and declared he didn't see anything, and he'd poked her a few times, to see if he could feel it. He couldn't. "It's not a person yet," she said. "It's a lot of cells, that's all. It'll be too small to see or feel for a while yet. Several months at least." Angel hadn't been convinced, and spent the majority of the week checking her stomach several times a day to see if he could hear it yet.

Though, to be fair, John had touched her stomach with a stupid grin more often since hearing the news too.

One day though, Angel asked her if she wanted his blood. Mary had been horrified. "Why?" she demanded.

"'Cause they take it all the time," he said. "Little bottles." He held his hands about two inches apart to show how little. "They take it an 'spec' it 'cause they say it's special. Cause of I don't get sick no matter what they put in my food." Mary had been livid, even if Angel didn't seem to have any idea what he was talking about. "So you can have some. I'll tell 'em to give it to you when they take it next time, an' you can have it so the baby is not sick."

"Where'd you hear the baby was going to be sick?" she asked, faintly.

Angel had shrugged. "Shark-Lilith says babies die a lot. An' get sick. An' she told you you'd hafta take a sick leave," he frowned. "I heared her say it. I wasn't s'posed to, but I did. An' I don't want you to leave."

"Oh, Angel, baby, I'm going to have to. It won't be for a while, but right before the baby comes, I'll have to take a few weeks off. I'll stay just as long as I can though," she said. "And come back quick. But you don't have to worry about it for months and months yet."

He had paused, considering this, and then went to fetch the calendar that was next to his blanket. They were currently working on telling the passage of time. Everything from seconds to years. She'd asked him how old he was, and he'd just stared at her blankly, then shrugged as if it didn't matter. She'd decided then and there to just tell him he was three, and had been in the cage for less than a year, which had led to the conversation about months and years and how they were different. He was having a much harder time with telling time than he had with words.

But he brought the calendar to her, and demanded she show him on it when she'd be gone. Mary did warn him she couldn't be exact, but she pointed out May 1st as her due date, and the whole week before, and most of the weeks after. It would be more than a whole imonth/i that he wouldn't see her. When he realized that he'd burst into tears, and been nearly inconsolable, for almost half an hour until she managed to point out that there was still a good seven months until then. Still, he seemed to not want to think about it, and she caught him glaring at her stomach sometimes.

Mary ached for Angel, but still couldn't figure out how to get him out of the Facility. Lilith had merely shrugged when Mary had accused her of poisoning Angel's food, and said that she wasn't in charge of his physical testing anymore, it was Alistair, and Azazel, her right hand man, now. Mary had never met Azazel before, but somehow, he gave her a creepy feeling of déjà vu. She didn't like the way he looked at her. It wasn't…exactly sexual. More…predatory.

He did admit to injecting strains of various diseases into Angel's apples and some of his stews though. He had been ever since he took over. He had been told to figure out if he got sick without hurting the creature, so he'd done as instructed. He did agree to stop. "Only for the baby," he said, nodding at her. "Don't want you eating something you shouldn't." His cool voice unnerved her, and she placed her hands over her stomach automatically, though she kicked herself immediately at the smirk he gave her.

She hurried away before she remembered to wonder how he'd known. Though that mystery was easily solved. Somehow everyone knew. Perhaps Angel had mentioned it. Or Bela. Mary hadn't seen much of Bela, recently, but the other woman had come in to clean out Angel's toilet (with great disgust, as ever), when Angel had been trying to determine where he'd be able to see the baby first, and so Mary had told the younger woman, who had nodded and congratulated her. Whilst managing to get in a jibe about how now Mary at least had an excuse to lose her girlish figure and left while Mary was still trying to figure out if Bela had just called her fat or not. iThat must be it/i she told herself. iBela told everyone./i God she was getting paranoid. Perhaps she'd been in the business too long. Mary sighed. Well, now she had to stay. For Angel, if nothing else.

Angel was almost the whole way through the third Narnia book, and enjoying it even more than the other two. He loved Shasta. And the relationship he had with the girl. Though he didn't understand why they were not yet together, since they seemed to be very deeply in love. Mary wasn't sure where he had figured out anything about love, but he was adamant. Mary decided she probably shouldn't have read him the fairy tales. Though, she had read the Grimm versions after he'd thought the Disney-fied ones were too silly. Dean had loved the Disney versions though, and had been horrified at the Grimm versions when she'd dared read one to him. Angel liked them, mostly because the things that happened in the fairy tales were worse than what was happening to him, and he liked to think he wasn't the worst one off. Which…for a three year old, Mary figured was rather pragmatic.

He was also learning French, which surprised him. But one day, when she was running late, she hurried in to see Bela, shoving the breakfast towards him with the claw (she still didn't like getting in the cage with him), and talking to him in French, and Angel replying to her in the same language. Bela didn't seem phased by this, so it must have happened before. Angel's accent was better than Bela's was though. When the other woman left, Mary raised her eyebrows. "How long have you been having these conversations with Bela?" she asked. Angel had squinted, his entire face constricting as he thought.

"A month?" he said, questioning. "She said a bad word, an' I tol' her it was a bad word an' she said I didn't know what it meant, and I said I did _so_ an' I tol' her what it meant an' she went a sort of funny color. White an' then sorta blotchy an' spotty an' she left quick, but then she came back an' she said some more things, an' I knew what they meant too, but I wasn't so good at talkin' so she helped me. Like you did." He started munching happily away on his fruit (orange, today), and Mary suddenly felt rather jealous. She shouldn't. If Angel wanted to learn languages, he damn well should, and it was best to start early, but….Bela had been teaching him. She didn't even _like_ Angel, so far as Mary knew. Angel seemed to sense her distress, and patted her leg.

"She doesn't get in the cage," he said. "An' she doesn't give me things or touch my hair," he told Mary, who went from jealous to very nearly weepy in a matter of seconds. Damn hormones, she thought. She saw Angel blink a few times, as if struck by a thought, and then he seemed to dismiss it, and went back to his meal.

In the next few weeks, Mary convinced Bela to get some language books for Angel. "You don't have to teach him. Just…give him the books. Let him do it." Bela said she'd think about it, but when he was finished with 'A Horse and His Boy,' Bela brought the practice book with a few vocab sheets she'd printed out as well. She wasn't sure if Lilith counted the French book as one of the two books Angel was allowed to have. So she'd printed some lists and things out from other books she'd used as a child, and shoved them into the main book before giving it to Angel. Mary had been rather impressed, but Bela had glared at her so intensely that Mary thought she might spontaneously combust, and said nothing about what she suspected of Bela's heart. Still. She kept it in mind. It might be useful to have Bela keep an eye on Angel while she was on leave.

Mary grew steadily bigger and bigger, and both Dean and Angel were astounded. Angel was glad there was finally something to see, some proof of what she said was true about why she was going away (which he still didn't like thinking about). Dean was coming up with more and more ridiculous names. The only one she didn't find funny was his suggestion of Angel. John had asked 'what if it is a boy?' and Dean had merely looked down his nose at his father (where had he learned _that_ expression?) and said rather imperiously that Angel could be a boy's name too.

John thought that was stupid, but Dean had grown upset, stamping his foot and saying that mom's Angel was always a boy, and John had looked surprised at his wife, over the head of a furious four year-old. Mary had shrugged. "His bedtime stories," she said. "There's a boy with wings. He's called Angel." John had scoffed a little, but didn't say anything else, which was good because Mary had a book in her hands and a look in her eye that meant she was about thirty seconds from throwing the book directly at her husband's head.

Dean had laughed and said it was disgusting when she ate celery with ice cream or an éclair with ketchup. He'd been fascinated, but horrified by both. Angel, when she told him about cravings, had merely stared at her for a long time and said 'okay.' It had taken her till she got home that night to realize that the boy had basically no idea what any of those foods even were. He might've read about ice cream or éclairs or ketchup…and he might have eaten celery, but he had no real frame of reference for knowing that the things she mentioned don't usually mix. Maybe they could get him some ice cream.

Lilith said absolutely not to the ice cream idea. "It is a imonster/i Mary," she said. "I am tired of telling you time and again. I have allowed you to teach it, to coddle it, but you do not need to…spoil it. I don't care how cute it is. That fluffy little winged freak is not a human little boy. It doesn't need sweets." Mary had left feeling close to tears, and blaming everything on hormones. She'd known that Lilith would say no. She shouldn't have allowed herself to hope. At least she hadn't promised Angel anything. That would be…awful.

She took another picture with Angel before she left, this one with him touching her stomach with one hand and her arm wrapped around his waist. This time, Bela took it. Mary also gave him a picture with her and Dean. Her shirt was rolled up a little and Dean was kissing her stomach.

"We are naming the baby after my grandfather," she told Angel. "Samuel, if it's a boy. Samantha, if it's a girl. Dean just calls it Sammy." She laughed. He sang to it all the time too. All sorts of songs. The ABC's and the Beatles and sometimes Disney songs. He sang 'You Are My Sunshine,' to the baby too, she told Angel. He considered this, and asked her how that one went. Mary felt almost about to cry again, but she was about to leave for the next month. Angel knew it, even if he didn't like it or fully understand. So she wrapped him in the blanket and leaned him against her side, trying (and mostly not succeeding) in smashing Angel's wings, but he didn't seem to mind. She ran her fingers through his hair (getting long, she'd have to cut it when she got back), and started to sing.

_ You are my sunshine_

_ My only sunshine_

_ You make me happy_

_ When skies are grey._

_ You'll never know dear_

_ How much I love you._

_Please don't take, my sunshine away._

"There are more verses," she started to say, but Angel was already almost asleep. He must have been exhausted. She carefully moved away. "Sleep well, sunshine," she murmured.

"It's okay," he mumbled. "I know 's'only a song. Not a sunshine." She wanted to protest, to tell him that was false, but he was already asleep. So she sang it again, and hoped to God that somewhere, even subconsciously, Angel heard her.

Samuel Winchester was born on May second, at 3:42 p.m.

A call was made almost the moment it happened.

A woman with a shark-like grin smiled.

Life without Mary was not fun for Angel. Bela was…okay, he supposed. But she didn't get in the cage, and she didn't talk to him about much of anything. Sometimes she spoke to him in French, but she didn't really say nice things. She called him a monster, and laughed when he told her that he was a boy. The only personal thing she said was that her step-dad and her mother had been monsters that looked like people too, just like him. And neither of them had started out that way. They'd been nice, like him. But she didn't trust monsters at all. No matter what they looked like. Angel thought that didn't sound right. But if they really had been monsters and hurt her….he shivered. Alistair and Azazel, whom he saw every day now that Mary wasn't teaching him, told him all about monsters. A different sort of education, Azazel called it.

He learned about what monsters did to humans. They showed him horrible pictures and sometimes, Alistair made him come to the morgue so he could see what it really looked like. His stomach had flipped when Alistair showed him the destroyed body. He felt the food in his stomach want to come back out his mouth again. That was wrong, so he turned away and tried to block out the sight, the smell. Alistair had just laughed before dragging him by the chain back to the cage. Mary always held his hand. No one else wanted to touch him.

He was told how to kill all sorts of monsters. Monsters that looked like people and monsters that didn't. He was told that many of them lived right here in the Facility. "Will they eat me?" he squeaked. Alistair had poked him with his long metal prod that he'd designed just so he could reach Angel when he stood in the middle of the cage to try and avoid their reach.

"Of course not," said Alistair, grinning. "You're a monster too."

"I'm just a boy!" he insisted. "Just a small boy!"

Alistair had jabbed him hard, again, and he cried out as the metal bruised his ribs.

"You're a dirty monster freak," he hissed. "And soon, you'll remember it."

After that, no one had come for two days. And Bela didn't bring back the toilet for him to use. When they'd finally come for him, he'd broken and just gone to the bathroom in the corner, and hunkered, miserable in the center of the cage.

They'd taken him back to the Post for that. They said he was acting like a dirty animal. They'd cleaned the cage too, and he'd been terrified that they would have destroyed his books, or the photos, but they hadn't. Half the cage was wet, but the other was bone dry, and that's where the photos, the books, and the blanket were.

But he knew they wouldn't be safe forever. He needed a place to keep them safe. Maybe he could ask Mary, when she got back. Something he could hide on his person. Or…somewhere in the cage perhaps. The photos were all carefully stuck in the dictionary, so all he really needed was a place to keep that. He'd like to keep Goodnight Moon too, but he had it memorized. If it came down to it, so long as he had the dictionary and the photos….well. The photos. He needed to keep the photos more than anything else.

Mary, John, and Dean Winchester welcomed Sam home two days after he was born. Dean checked on several occasions that they could not and would not put his baby brother back, and that no one was going to take him away. He was reassured each time. Still, he checked in on his brother often, coming straight in from daycare to hurry to wherever his brother was. With his mother, or in his crib, generally. Once with John. But that was only once.

Dean was surprised by how quickly Sammy grew. On the day before Mary went back to work, she took two pictures of Dean with Sam. One she gave to Dean. The other she took with her in her bag. She wanted to show Angel. She almost considered the boy family himself. Just like her Dean. She hadn't told him that, and she hadn't told her family about him, except for Dean, in stories. Maybe one day she'd be able to introduce them. She hoped so.

Bela had kept her appraised of…most of the goings on at the Facility. Her reports were not detailed and they were not encouraging. To be fair, Bela did have other jobs at the moment, Angel wasn't the only monster she was observing, unlike Mary. But some of her reports were disturbing. - U009WC2B was insolent, received discipline.

-Cleaned the cage of U009WC2B. Ensured 'personal' effects remained dry.

- U009WC2B not sleeping. Found photos of werewolf kills and a hunter kill of a vampire in the cage. U009WC2B claims New Education.

Mary was less than impressed. Apparently, during her absence, Lilith and Alistair had started trying to torture Angel again, and Bela only ever called him by his Company designation. Mary didn't want him to forget that he was Angel, that he was good. Not a monster at all.

He did look a bit thinner, a bit more tired when she saw him. But he smiled when she came in. He took the photograph of Dean and baby Sam reverently and put it with his other things. He asked her, before she left, if there was something he could use to hide his things in, if he had to.

"I'll think of something," she promised. And she did, when she was placing a little hat on Sam's head, she thought of it. The next day, she visited Lilith, and said that U009WC2B was outgrowing his trousers, that he needed a new pair. Lilith shrugged, and gestured. They didn't have many small pairs of the trousers, as mostly, all the monsters wearing the pants at all were adults. But there were a few small pairs. Mary wondered when they had been made. Lilith didn't say. But she took the pants home with her that night, and carefully sewed one of the stretchy little hats into the front of the pants. It made a handy little pocket to hide small things in. "It won't hide the books, she said quietly. "But it'll keep the photos safe. And there's a needle and a bit of thread, for when you outgrow ithese/i pants." The hat even had a little snap, so he could snap it closed and be sure the pictures, or the needle and thread, wouldn't fall out.

The routine began again. Mary giving Angel lessons; telling time, English, History, and now she added monsters as well. She wanted Angel to get the full story, not the nightmares that Alistair and Azazel told him. "They aren't pretty stories," she said. "But Monsters aren't pretty. I've learned…you aren't born a monster. You become one. Only you can stop yourself from being a monster, Angel."

He had nodded seriously, and thrown himself into learning about the monsters of the myths with as much intensity as he did everything else, if not more. He was determined not to become a monster. Mary wondered if she should tell him about human monsters as well as the supernatural ones. No, she thought. That'll just confuse him. She'd wait.

Angel was nearly as fluent in French as he was in English, Bela said. If he wanted to learn a different language, he had to look to someone else. Mary didn't know any but English, except some Latin and some rudimentary Spanish. She didn't want to teach him the Latin though. All she knew were exorcisms. And she was years and iyears/i out of practice with them.

She appealed to Lilith, who was unwilling at first, but finally relented when reminded that they needed to test the limits of the monster's mind as well as his form. Lilith thought that if it weren't Mary Winchester making the requests, she'd probably do it herself. She was curious to see how clever the little 'Angel' really was. She didn't say this, of course. But she did get in a German who usually worked mostly with vampires. He agreed to teach the winged freak his native language. So long as he didn't butcher it, the man had added with a sniff.

Two weeks later he was still teaching Angel German, and had even spent an extra hour, usually after Mary had left, to give him extra practice. Lilith started Angel on learning other things too. Mary thought it was too much too soon, but Lilith smirked, and reminded her of mental limits, and so Angel started learning basic botany and astronomy. He loved learning about space. He was fascinated by it, and Mary wished she'd remembered to give him that book about the moon she'd promised him shortly after he'd arrived at the Company Facility. He'd never mentioned it of course, but she could see now how much he would have loved it . If it was for learning, Lilith decided, he was allowed more than one book. So long as he was using it daily, and beyond just the lesson time. Fiction still had a limit. Never more than two. Right now it was the sixth Narnia book, and one Mary called Twelfth Night, that was a play. He was enjoying both almost as much as he was the lessons about astronomy.

The day after Halloween, Mary proudly showed Angel a photo of Dean as a…Angel tilted his head to try and make it out. Mary had laughed when he failed. "It's Angel Batman," she said. John had been horrified, Mary touched and amused, and mostly all the neighbors had been confused, amused, and a bit disturbed all at once. At least, until Mary told them that no, Dean didn't think Batman was dead, but she told him stories about an Angel sometimes, and he wanted him to be part of the costume. And he wanted to be Batman. So he was both. Sam was in the picture too, staring up at his dramatically posed big brother like he couldn't decide to eat him or cry. Sam was dressed as a…."dog," Mary informed Angel when he couldn't figure that one out either.

"I would like to be a batman," he decided. "I have real wings. I could be an angel Batman too." Mary nodded.

"Maybe next Halloween." Angel had been satisfied by that, and Mary's heart ached for him. Perhaps she should stop trying to share the outside world with him. He only wanted a taste of it. He spent the rest of the day with her, outside of lessons, leaping around the cage, wings spread wide, crying out, "Angel Batman!" and scooping up the space book before throwing it to the ground again so he could 'rescue' it again later.

It was nearly Thanksgiving, when Mary was roused from her bed by Sam's crying. She turned to John to get him to take care of the baby, but John wasn't there. He must have fallen asleep watching the game. Again. She yawned and padded to the bedroom. Sam wasn't crying anymore. "John?" she asked. The shadowed figure by the crib, raised a finger to his mouth. "Shhhhhh."

Well. At least she could turn off the television, she thought, heading down the stairs. She stopped then, frozen. Because John was in the chair, asleep in front of the television. She ran back up the stairs, hardly able to breathe.

A few minutes later, the nursery burst into flames, and a broken and horrified family watched as the house in which they were making their life burned. John Winchester, held Dean, who clutched at his baby brother, and tried not to cry.

Angel was woken by a sharp yank on his collar, something that hadn't happened in months. "Well, hello, freak," said Alistair. "Mother Mary isn't coming back. That means you are all mine."


	5. After

Dean woke up gasping every night. Sometimes more than once. He always checked on Sam immediately. John was at a loss for what to do. He didn't know what had killed his wife, why she'd been on the ceiling. He didn't think Dean had seen….but Dean checked on Sam every night, pale and shaking. He didn't speak, and that was horrifying to John more than anything.

Finding the psychic was…a surprise. She told him of monsters. Of a Company that collected them for study, and of Hunters that killed them. "Mary worked at the Company, honey," she said. "The main Facility is just on the other side of the woods, there." He'd known where she worked. He hadn't known what she did.

"She said…animals," he said, hoarsely. "She worked with animals."

"I suppose, in a way she did," said the psychic. "At least, it would have seemed like it to her."

John packed up his bags, and shoved Sam and Dean's (mostly donated) new clothes into another bag. "We're going on a trip," he told Dean. "We're gonna find what killed your mom."

He had both of them in the car, and he made a pitstop at Bobby's. Bobby lived on the outskirts of town, and he owned the Salvage Yard. He and John had often done a lot of work together, with John fixing cars and Bobby either fixing them or breaking them down for parts, whichever was needed.

"You complete….you cannot take a traumatized four-year-old and a six month old on a revenge road trip John!" Bobby was furious.

'I think I-" began John coldly.

" No" growled Bobby. "Come on John, don't be an idiot. Stay here for a bit, and if you want to go tearing off on a wild goose chase to find some monster or other, then leave the boys here."

"You knew about monsters?" demanded John.

"Of course," sighed Bobby. "My wife…she was killed by one. I've done some research but…I'm not gonna go hunt all the other sumbitches down. I mean…I did, for a bit, but I didn't have kids, John."

John was not pleased. His wife had lied to him for as long as she had known him. His best friend had done the same. "I can't believe you," he seethed. "You lie to me? Mary lies to me, and it's her damn job that gets her killed and you don't want me to avenge her?"

"I didn't say that," said Bobby. "But you go down that road, you'll leave your boys wantin' a father as well as a mom. Leave 'em here, John. For a bit. You…get it out of your system and I'll take care of things here. They know me. They like me. Give 'em…a bit of normalcy. But for god's sakes, John. Dean still ain't talking! If you leave now, he might…I dunno. Just…give it a little longer, alright?"

It seemed to take a lot out of him, but eventually, John acquiesced. He spent his time at Bobby's divided between trying to make his sons comfortable, and researching monsters. Bobby had a lot of books that John had never noticed before. John had been in the marines. He was a good fighter, even if he was a bit out of practice.

Dean slowly began talking again. Quietly, mostly only to Sam, but eventually to John, and to Bobby. Bobby suggested taking him back the preschool he'd started at the beginning of the year. "It's only a few hours, and they'll be havin' a party," he said. "He's a kid. Let him be a kid."

As it turned out, it was a good idea. Dean relaxed more fully at the party than John had seen him in weeks. And if John stayed the entire time, the teacher at least understood, and Dean seemed grateful for it too. He glanced over every few minutes at his father, and brought him food sometimes. He fell asleep on the way home.

John left shortly after New Year's. Dean had been going back to school regularly for about a week, and Bobby had been the one taking him. He didn't think Bobby really approved of his leaving, but John didn't live for Bobby's approval.

He drove up to the Facility first, just to get a look. There wasn't a path through the woods, which would have made it take a lot shorter, in the car. As it was, the path to it was winding and long, and it took about an hour to drive around to get to the parking lot. He knew Mary had complained about the drive several times, but he had thought she'd been exaggerating. "Sorry, Mary," he whispered. He felt his fingers clench into fists as he glared up at the stark grey building. He would find what killed Mary, and he would kill it. And then he'd come back here, and kill every monster in this place. Studying them wouldn't help. They were monsters. They had to die.

For several weeks after John left, Dean waited every day at the window. Bobby explained to him that John was going to come back, but it was hard to say when. Eventually, Dean stopped watching. He went to school and he played with his brother. He seemed to be doing better.

John did come back. Sometimes he came back beaten, but he did return every few weeks at least, to check on his sons, to get some more research done. John started teaching Dean about guns. About monsters. Bobby disapproved, but John always said "I'm his father, Bobby. Me. I know what's best for my son. And I am not gonna lie to him like you and Mary did to me. It's dangerous and he needs to be able to protect himself and Sammy."

Every time he left, John told Dean, "look after Sammy." And Dean took that to heart. Bobby tried to make Dean do other things, but the boy was stubborn, and he learned about guns so he could impress his dad when the man eventually came home. He watched Sam like a hawk, making sure he ate and had clean diapers and toys and everything else he could think of.

Come spring, Bobby signed Dean up for little league, which ended up being a brilliant plan because it got Dean out of the house, allowed him to have fun, and 'improved his hunting skills.' Bobby was still pleased with himself for coming up with that. Dean had been worried that John would think he didn't care about hunting. Bobby had told him all about ghosts then, and swinging an iron bat to get rid of them. He also told of him of the merit of being able to catch fast moving projectiles (though, he added, if you don't have the proper equipment, you have to get out of the way, but either way, this will help you see it coming). So Dean happily joined the little league (well, t-ball) team, and John was glad that Dean could do a little something normal.

Bobby taught both boys, when they were older, how to hunt animals in the woods. Deer and rabbits mostly. He also warned them how to avoid bears and wolves, but he did tell them how to kill them if they absolutely had to do it. Or at least to scare it away.

Dean had very few pictures of his mother that had escaped the fire. There were a few Polaroid's that he stared at sometimes. His mom and him and Sam, him and his mom, a photo of the entire family outside their house. But that was it. Three pictures. He didn't want to forget her. Her memory insisted on slipping away anyway.

Angel didn't believe Alistair. "You're lying" he said. "She's comin' back, she promised to tell me 'bout Thanksgiving. An' the Indians and pilgrims an' the rock they ate at. The pilgrim rock. "

Alistair just laughed. "Mary hates you," he said. "You're a monster. She has her own, human children to love."

"No!" Angel cried out. "That's not true. She doesn't hate me an' she's coming back!"

Alistair yanked the chain, forcing Angel to his knees. "You'll never see her again," he hissed before sauntering out of the room.

And Bela brought his breakfast, and said nothing but a passing 'hello monster' in French and left him to eat it. No one came for him. Bela took the toilet and the empty breakfast with her when she came back with lunch. And still, no one came. Mary didn't come. But she always came. Except…when she had her baby. And some weekends. But she had warned him about the baby. And it wasn't a weekend. Maybe she was sick, he thought, desperately. She's sick and couldn't come, but she'll be back tomorrow.

But she didn't come back the next day. Or the day after. For more than a week, the only person he saw was Bela. The last day, Bela shifted her weight slightly. "I won't be coming back anymore," she said.

"You hate me too," he replied dully.

"I don't like you," agreed Bela. "But…okay, look. It wasn't fair of them to tell you Mary hated you. She didn't. She died. There was a fire, and she died. I'm only telling you because Mary helped me once. A long time ago." She left, then, leaving Angel stunned and feeling like his stomach was flipping over on itself. Mary was dead. She had died horribly and painfully and she wasn't ever coming back. Not because she was mad at him, but because she couldn't. He cried for the first time in a long time that night, holding the blanket she'd given him. He had pictures. He had books. And he knew that any of them could be taken away at anytime. He had nothing. Not even Mary.

The next day, it was apparently decided that he'd had enough of being basically ignored. Azazel returned, looking incredibly pleased with himself. "Your physical training begins today," he said. "Your mornings belong to me."

Azazel didn't like it when Angel didn't do things well. If he couldn't do push ups or sit ups—not correctly, or not enough—the man would hit him, and make him keep trying. As he got more and more tired, his performance suffered more, which generally led to a lot of bruises. He was made to show how well he could climb, how long he could hold on to a metal bar, climb ropes. Lilith made a joke about boot camp once when she came to see how he was doing. Angel didn't know what she meant. He'd never been to camp, and he didn't own any boots. Mary would have explained. Lilith slapped his face so hard it left a bruise on his cheek in the shape of a hand and he heard something in his neck pop. She told him not to speak unless he was spoken to first.

He couldn't fly yet, but that didn't stop them trying to make him do it anyway. They did keep him chained for it, but they always chained him around the neck. He was pretty sure that once he nearly broke it. After that, he always held onto the chain with his hands when they pushed him off anything high. It usually meant he hurt pretty badly when he crashed to the floor, but at least his neck felt okay. Sore, but not too painful.

He still had lessons every day. But now there was a sort of fear that went along with them. He had to do well in the physical lessons, as well as the school lessons because if he didn't…the lessons he liked were taken away and replaced with sessions with Alistair. He'd be tied down in that horrible white room and the man would cut him. Or burn him. Or half drown him. All in the name of 'testing,' the man said. How much he bled and how fast he clotted. What substances burned better than others. If there was any sort of metal that hurt him worse than others. How long he could hold his breath. There were other tests too, if he did poorly. They wanted to see how long he could go without sleep before it started making him go crazy. How long he could go without food before his body started shutting down.

He wasn't sure how much time passed anymore, because they took away the clock in the cage-room, and the calendar he had was out of date. And they never told him what day it was, or what month or what year.

When his fluffy feathers started falling out, he panicked, until he saw that there were a few long, sleek feathers in their place. He was growing his first flight feathers. It sort of hurt too, because not only were his feathers growing, the bones of his wings grew too. Everything was growing, he noticed one day after the horrible Post-shower. They still mostly let him bathe, but he was back to having to use the toilet only once a day, and he had to use the pail again, though they did give him paper to clean himself with. He didn't have to get cleaned off at the Post every day, but it happened at least once a week. But he still only had one pair of trousers, and the one blanket, so he still preferred letting himself air dry after these baths or showers before he put the trousers back on. And one day, he found that they were higher than his ankles, even when he pulled them down almost off his hips.

They gave him a new pair on the day he flew for the first time. It wasn't far, but he had gotten airborne and stayed that way for about half a minute. "Tomorrow we'll go high again," they said.

He wasn't sure how the Facility was shaped really. He knew the way to his cage from the white room, and from the dark room where they let him bathe. He knew the way, now, to the huge gym-room that Azazel took him to do his physical lessons and to fly. That room was massive. They had to go down in a box (and the numbers went down quite far too) and entered into a room huge rectangular room. There was an oval that went all the way around the room, which Azazel made him run on. Apparently, once around it was a quarter of a mile. There were ropes in one corner that hung from the ceiling that Azazel said went up to the top of the building. There were twenty stories apparently, though he didn't explain what he meant by that properly. Angel decided he meant floors.

There was an interesting device against one wall, that also went the whole way to the top, but it had little protrusions. Azazel called it a rock wall, and made him climb that too.

There were lots of places where there were weights and machines to test strength and ones to test agility that Azazel said were gymnastic equipment. There was always something new to see, in the gym.

When they arrived there, every day, Angel's walking-chain was clipped to another chain that hung from a track on the ceiling. It allowed him to go anywhere in the room, so long as he followed the track.

When his flight feathers all came in, and he could fly a bit from the ground Azazel would give him 'goals.' He had to climb halfway up the rock wall and jump off, and fly down. Azazel seemed to be the only one that didn't expect him to be perfect right away. He was still quite harsh when Angel did poorly, but he didn't try to make him fly around the room, like Lilith suggested.

One day, strapped to the table, shaking with pain as Alistair cut a design with a silver knife into his side, the man told him he had been with them for three years. That didn't mean much to Angel. Just three years of….this. He didn't remember much about before the Cage anyway. Sometimes he dreamed of grass beneath his feet, or of a young boy's laugh, but the memories were far away and felt more like dreams. He remembered Mary though. He remembered her clearly, and he missed her dreadfully. He even missed Bela, but according to the small woman teaching him Chinese, Bela didn't work here anymore at all.

The biggest mistake that he ever made though, was shortly after Alistair had told him that he'd been here three years. He'd just undergone a truly brutal physical lesson, and had screamed at Azazel that he shouldn't even be here, that he was a person, not a monster and he hadn't done anything wrong.

There had been a beating for that, and then he was dragged, roughly to his cage. Not long after that, Lilith arrived, a short white dress making her pale skin look a bit darker. She had a full length mirror with her, and she dragged Angel out of the cage with the chain without speaking. She held the chain close to the collar, and forced him to look in the mirror.

"What do you see?" she asked, quietly.

"A boy," he said. "And a woman." She jerked the chain, making him choke. He was skinny, with bruises and cuts and scars, though not as many as he'd expected, considering the amount of times Alistair had cut into him. Most of the scars were fading anyway.

"What do you see?" she asked again.

"Me," he gasped. "An' you."

"No!" She actually yelled it. Angel wasn't sure he'd ever heard her yell before. "Wings. See that?" She yanked on one, hard, moving his whole body and tearing out a few feathers in the process. He yelled with pain. She shoved the feathers in his face. "It hurt you for me to pull them out," she said. "They are part of you. You have wings." She tapped a long finger nail into the small muscle just below his chest. "You have a whole different musculature than a human person. Alistair, take off your shirt." The man hesitated, but did so. He was sort of scrawny. And ugly. And hairy. Angel made a face. Would he look like that too? "Look," hissed Lilith. "He's got one set of muscles where you have two. Does that look human to you?" He wasn't used to anything else. He'd never seen a human with their shirt off. "You are a monster," she said. "A freak. You are not a person, you are so, iso/i much less than that. You are nothing. If you were a vampire you'd be dead by now. And you know why you are not? Because of these." She pointed to the scars. "Any one of those marks would have killed a human. Any one of the times you've passed out because your neck…you called it popping?" she laughed. "Any one of those times would have snapped the neck of a human instantly. You aren't dead because we haven't figured out the easiest way to kill you."

Alistair sort of wanted to see if he could just cut out the boy's heart, but Lilith said they had a reputation to maintain, and if there were more creatures like this boy, there had to be a way of killing it easily. They could probably shoot it in the head, but then it would be over too quickly, Lilith always said. And Alistair didn't mind. He liked working with something that could heal so quickly. Made things last longer.

Lilith tossed Angel back into the cage. "No food. No water. No lessons. If you read, I will know it and I will burn your books and your precious photos in front of you." She locked the cage door. "You will have your physical lessons and tests with Alistair and Azazel. The only thing you will study will by your anatomy and the anatomy of a human. You will document every. Single. Way. That you are different." She pointed then to the small red lights blinking around the room. "Mary was very thorough in her reports. We've added cameras since she left. I see everything that happens in this room." She smirked. "Have fun."

She turned and left, Alistair and Azazel close behind.

The next week was torturous. They didn't let him eat or sleep or drink. He had several physical sessions a day and when he passed out, they forced him awake. He had to learn about muscles and bones and blood. He was given reports that had been taken of his own. Some of it was the same. Some of it was….very different. And every time he saw Alistair or Azazel they asked the same question. "What are you?" And he replied, "I'm Angel. I'm just a boy with wings." And they would hit him. Or cut him. Or choke him. Generally, punishment was pain. "You are a monster. A freak. You are not human. You are worth less than dirt and you'd better pray we never find another of your kind, because if we do, we will kill you."

Lilith came to him at the end of the week. "A human would be dead from lack of water," she said. "You're just thirsty. What are you?"

"Angel," he rasped. "I'm…person."

She had gotten in the cage with him, which was a surprise. She kicked him, and he lay gasping on the floor. "What are you?" she asked, and kicked him again. She had stilettos on. It hurt a lot. "What are you?" she yelled, stomping on his hand. He screamed as he felt something snap and her shoe thrust halfway through his hand.

He wasn't really sure he even said it later, but he must have, because that day he got water. He also got a bandage for his hand, and he was allowed to read again.

"Monster."

He didn't believe it, really. Not at first. But he had to tell her what she wanted to get what he wanted. He wanted to learn to got back to physical lessons with Azazel once a day, and with Alistair once a week and his schooling every day. But every day, they'd still ask "What are you?" and he had to answer "Monster."

"Designation?" they'd ask him.

"U009WC2B" he'd reply. "The ninth unknown you've found, two wings of a birdlike classification. "

"Name?"

"Angel." If he said that, they'd hit him. And he learned For 'name' they'd take 'monster,' 'freak,' 'none,' or 'U009WC2B.' Angel was the name Mary had given him, and he wasn't deserving of a name. He was a monster. Monsters don't get names. They had serial numbers.

Years passed, as they always do, methodically, constant, unyielding. He didn't remember a time before the Cage. He dreamed sometimes, of a laughing boy, twinkling brown eyes, flame-red hair. He dreamed, sometimes, of grass beneath his feet, a breeze in his hair, and sun warmed skin. These were just dreams, he knew. He was imagining, based on things he read.

He had been in the Cage for twenty years, they told him. He was older than that, so there must have been something before…but this was all he knew.

He had pictures: a woman that held him and smiled, blonde hair mixing with his dark hair; pictures of the woman with a man and two other boys, looking just as happy as she looked in the ones with him. He knew she wasn't his mother. Her name was Mary, and she'd called him Angel. The other boys were Sam and Dean, and the man was John. He didn't really remember that. But the names were written on the back of the pictures in fading pen. He'd darkened it several times over the years. He remembered that Mary had cared for him. That she had been warm and she had smoothed his hair back from his forehead and that she had liked his wings.

He remembered that she had sung to him. He dreamed of the song sometimes.

He had a bag now, and a new pair of trousers. He never took the bag off, not for anything. It had the book Goodnight Moon in it with pictures carefully pressed between the pages, a pocket dictionary, whatever fiction book he was allowed to read at the time, a needle, a tiny bit of thread. There was a hat too, with the initials S.W. sewn in black thread (his was white). A baby's hat.

Even when he had to go to the Post, he protected this bag as best he could with his body. Each item was special, and he knew that they'd take it. He wouldn't let them. He needed each thing in the bag. He needed to remember…remember a time when he was more than just a monster, a freak with wings. And maybe…one day he could be Angel again.

**So...Seriously, I have no idea what happened the last time I posted this. So...here it is again.**

**Feel free to leave comments or questions.**


	6. Escape

U009WC2B lounged in its cage, fingers lightly brushing against the collar around it's neck. It had grown from a skinny child to a thin, but rather toned man-like creature, dark hair roughly shorn on occasion, but currently brushing it's shoulders. It would soon be time to cut it again, absently thought the young man who watched the tapes. Jaspar Howard, flicked his gaze to another monitor, where a vampire sat sullen and starving in a different cage.

The winged creature, this, U009WC2B, for whatever reason, had always been kept separate, according to the logs and notes. They were all computerized now, though most of them had been handwritten at the time. But the winged man had never tested with other monsters, never fought with them or stayed in the same cage or even the same part of the Facility. Most of them were kept like prisoners in a jail, rows and rows of cells on several floors, but not U009WC2B. That one had always been kept far away, even from the other unknowns. Lilith, the boss, said it was for research purposes, and it had to be watched all the time.

Jaspar didn't usually watch during its lessons. That was boring. It just read, or did sums or learned theoretical science or…something. He'd seen some of the papers, and they had been, embarrassingly, a bit too technical and advanced for Jaspar to understand. The monster didn't get to do anything practical, nothing hands on, much as it wanted to. Jaspar had been surprised that it was allowed to read, allowed to learn, but apparently, it had been a toddler when it had come, and there had been a scientist that worked with it that wanted to see what it could do, like the chimps they'd taught to do sign language somewhere.

But Jaspar didn't watch when it was in lessons, or when it had to do the physical tests. It was with scientists then, or Alistair, or Azazel. Both men frightened Jaspar, and he thought they beat the creature more than it strictly needed, not that the bruises or cuts ever lasted long. A few weeks ago, it had broken its arm because…well, Jaspar didn't know. But it had taken less than two weeks for the limb to be fully functional again. It just proved that the monster wasn't human, no matter what it looked like.

It was pale, almost translucent pale, but strong, from all the physical training Azazel insisted on. Azazel, Jaspar had noticed, often tested monsters like he was training them. Training them for what, Jaspar didn't know, and he didn't dare ask. Lilith didn't look as scary as her two main trainers, but she frightened him more than either of them.

Sometimes, in its quiet time, the monster would read. He had all manner of books, fiction and non-fiction alike. Sometimes it would reach into the small bag it kept slung about its shoulders and leaf through a children's book, though Jaspar had no idea why. Right now though, it was just lying there, arms under it's head, huge darkly colored wings spreading out on either side of it, taking up almost the entire width of the cage, sometimes twitching a little, as its mouth moved. Talking? Or singing? The tapes had no sound, so Jaspar didn't know. He watched the monster, and wondered if it was terrible that he'd never seen the creature do anything considered monstrous at all, and he'd never found anything in the files to show that the creature was dangerous. It could fly, it healed quickly, and was almost frighteningly smart. But it had never hurt anyone, and it didn't seem to consider it even. Jaspar sighed, rubbing his hand against the bridge of his nose. That sort of thinking would get him fired.

U009WC2B was a monster. And an Unknown at that. There was no telling what it might do, which is why they kept it locked up, and would continue to do so until the day it died.

"What are you?"

"A monster."

"Name?"

"I don't have one."

"What does it say on your file then? What's your serial number?"

"U009WC2B." He wasn't sure why they always thought he'd forget that. It was tattooed on his arm, though apparently that was because he'd been so small when they'd tattooed him. Other Unknowns had the tattoo across their chest. He also refrained from commenting that his serial number had an equal amount of numbers and letters in it, though he wasn't sure what that would be called. A barcode or something, except that he didn't have a chip. Or lines. He ran his hands through his hair. It was getting too long again, flaring up at the ends. They'd cut it soon. He hated it on the day they cut his hair. Alistair always restrained him, as if he'd do something stupid if he didn't, and took a wicked looking knife and sawed at his hair until it was cropped close to the back of his neck, and Alistair always, _always_ drew blood, and he did it on purpose, without reason. But Alistair liked to draw blood. He didn't need an excuse like a hair cut to do it He just called it 'research' and left it at that.

"One of these days," Alistair said today, "I am going to be allowed to take one of those pretty eyes of yours. You only need one."

"Azazel wouldn't thank you for it," he replied. "He'd have to retrain me to compensate."

Alistair had jabbed his electric prod into U009WC2B's side for that. The monster had jerked in pain, and tried to recall that brief, hazy time, when someone had called him Angel, and stroked his hair with cool, smooth hands.

Two figures stood, backs to the wind, staring at the huge, ugly, grey building below. Technically, there were two prongs to the building, and three outcrops, but they were all connected by breezeways and passages, so it could be considered all one building.

"It's bigger than it looks?" he asked his companion.

The woman nodded, brushing her hair back into a ponytail. "According to the security guard, there's eight upper levels, which…I thought was rather obvious, but he said there's twelve levels lower down.

He went on about permits or something, and how they couldn't get the rights to build it too high, but they could go down easy enough, so they did."

The man nodded. "And what did he tell you of the monsters then?"

"Most of them are kept together," she said. "The smaller wing there," she pointed to an outcrop that was only four levels high, "That has the more dangerous ones, the ones that killed lots of humans.

Then, there's the main jail area, which….is something like eight or nine stories, that just holds other monsters. Ones that killed a few, or just hurt them, or that didn't kill anyone, but only because they didn't have a chance—he was well indoctrinated," she said, with a little bit of disgust. "But that's all the front half. The upper floors, the lower floors, the back…that's all sorts of other things. Testing rooms, offices, labs."

"Come on," the man said, almost whining. "Did you get what we needed or not?"

The woman smirked. "I did. He didn't want to part with the secret at first, it took more than I'd hoped but…he said there's one that's different, because he's been there so long. A man with wings and an incredible healing rate is kept off to the side, apart from all the other monsters. He's never so much as seen another monster, and he sees very few humans. He's also one of the only creatures that the boss goes down to see herself, and he gets….well, the man said he got 'special treatment' from the two main 'testers' but he didn't elaborate on that, so I imagine it's not very good. Anyway. He did say that the gym is in the second building, the windowless one, and it takes up the entire building. It is literally just a gym. Well, it's a training facility to test and record physical feats, but it sounded like a gym to me."

The man nodded. "And the winged man is brought there daily?"

"Yes," she said. "Usually from one o'clock to about four."

The man nodded.

"Are we doing this today?" asked the woman, a bit shakily. "How do we even know it will work?"

"It has to work," said the man. "Come on. We better get started."

Azazel didn't really drag him much anymore. The man knew he'd follow calmly, even if he didn't take his hands off the bag. Alistair had tried to take it from him once, had beaten him bloody and broken half of his fingers, and he did not release it. Azazel had worked the monster's wings and legs for the week or so after that, until it's fingers had healed.

"We'll see how long you can fly today," said the man, snapping the collar chain to the tracked one, attached to the ceiling. "You won't stop until you fall. Go."

And he'd launched himself into the air, wings beating hard and fast. It was always exhausting to start from the ground, with no leverage at all. It was hard to fly in general. He'd read a book about birds once, and it had talked about thrust and currents in the air. He'd never felt anything like that, but it did make him realize how much more difficult he had it than they. He dreamed sometimes, of flying in the open air, of seeing the blue sky, the yellow sun, the green grass. He knew of these from his books, but he wanted to _see_ them.

It was exhausting, but he flew, around and around. Azazel would make him to the aerial obstacle course soon. He always waited until his wings were faltering though. Hopefully there'd be some more time.

Then something exploded. It was loud and close and the whole room seemed to shake. He hovered in midair, though Azazel was already grabbing for the mechanism that would force him down. The walls shook again, and something cracked.

The air was rent with noise then, as he'd imagined fireworks might sound, but so much louder.

Something fell past him, and with something akin to horror, he saw plaster drifting down from the ceiling. A small hole had appeared. Everything was shaking now, and Azazel was yelling, though he couldn't make out the words. Huge chunks of ceiling were falling all around him now, and it was all he could do to avoid them. The chain attached to the track in the ceiling snapped, and he almost fell as the sudden weight was pulled downward. Azazel grabbed it from the floor and yanked, and he was jerked down as well.

He might have let it happen, except he felt it. Air. Cool, fresh, unfiltered. He caught himself with his wings, and looked up. A hole in the ceiling and through it, brilliant blue. He dove then, finding the piece where the chain connected to the track-chain, ignoring Azazel's swearing and frantic pulls. It took a few tries with shaky hands, but he couldn't let the man drag him back to his cell, not now. He was thrown off balance again as the chain dropped, the end of it clapping Azazel on the head. He was numb, as the man collapsed, bleeding slightly from the wound above his eye.

Everything was still shaking. Bits of the roof and the obstacle course (tires and rings and rods that would swing at him to bat him out of the air) were still falling. One struck him on the shoulder, and jerked him back to the present. He managed to get a hold of the iron bar before it fell, and he made for the hole in the roof. He only could make sense of one thought _:Get away, get away, getawaygetawaygetaway…awayawayaway…_ He burst through the roof, shaking plaster off his wings and out of his hair and beat his wings frantically, propelling himself straight up. He stared down at the scene below him, the building…that he had lived for his entire life, was much larger than he'd ever dreamed. There were two parts, connected like an H, and both were shaking, though the gym area where he had been was taking a far worse beating than the other side.

He swallowed, but couldn't stay to watch. He saw some people running away from the building, some crawling out new holes in the sides and jumping, before running away. Some seemed to misjudge their ability to survive the fall, others jumped from very high and still got up to run away, toward the woods.

That seemed like a good enough plan to him. He turned and with a powerful beat of his wings, tried to put as much distance between him and the building as he could.

The sky wasn't blue, really, it was grey, heavy and thick, but it was _freedom_ and it was easily the most glorious thing he had ever experienced. Trying to figure out how to fly was rather more difficult than he'd anticipated, but if he let the wind carry him…his wings seemed to know, more or less, what to do. He was clumsy, far more clumsy than a natural bird would be, but he found that he couldn't care.

He was free. He thought now, if someone asked his name, he wouldn't say he didn't have one. He was

_Angel_ again. He wouldn't have to be cowed by Azazel, or torn to shreds by Alistair, or half killed by Lilith because she wanted to see what he could take. He let out a triumphant howl, and let the wind and his wings carry him.

The man grinned from the hilltop as the woman laughed when they saw a winged shape rise from the trembling building. "We've done well," he said, pleased. "The rest is up to him."

The woman frowned slightly. "I want to find him," she said. "To explain…"

"There will be time for that," the man assured her. "Just not yet. We've done our part, for now. He's out. But he isn't ready yet."

"Damn his being ready," she said, not hugging him any longer, watching the fading form with dismay.

"He needs us. And we spent so long looking…"

"And we got him out." He brushed her hair, red as flame from her face. "And we will see him again, I promise. I got us this far." He grinned. "You ready to trust me?"

She sighed, and watched as the winged man grew smaller.

"I trust you," she said.

Both man and woman shivered slightly, as each grew a large pair of wings. Moments later, the hilltop was empty, and there was no sign, not even indents in the grass, than anyone had been there at all.


	7. Survival

**Been a while since I updated. Sorry about that, if...you know. Anyone is actually reading this...Anyway. Here I go. This chapter has some...Junglebook type things in it. So you are unsurprised when it happens...**

There was a town, he could see it. It lay to the south of the Company buildings, separated by miles of trees. But from this high up, he could see it. He wanted to avoid the town, like he was avoid the Company. He had to get far away from both. He panicked slightly, clutching the bag and his metal rod to him as he beat his wings. He probably didn't need to strain as much as he was, but he was used to stale, unmoving air, and he had…habits.

If he had grown up flying the skies, he might have noticed the slight changes in the wind, in the pressure of the air. All he really noticed was that it was getting darker, that it was getting harder to fly. He was tired, he knew. He'd been flying for a long time. He couldn't even see the town anymore, or the large grey building that had been his home.

The rain surprised him enough that he nearly dropped the rod. It wasn't at all like he'd expected. The water was freezing, but all encompassing, not focused on one painful point at a time like it had been when he'd been chained to the Post.

But the wind grew stronger, and found himself being tossed and buffeted by it. He was blown back, and when he tried to shift his wings his whole body was twisted around. He had no control, could barely even see. Thunder crashed and he could feel the vibrations in his teeth. Lightening flashed shortly after, close enough to make his hair stand on end. He tried to angle himself down, to take refuge in the trees, but the wind made it difficult to properly maneuver his wings, or to move them at all. He managed to get them down eventually, but he hadn't streamlined his body as well, hadn't taken into account what would happen if he closed himself in the wings without the proper form, and he started a terrifying free fall. The rain beat against him in torrents, stinging him wherever it touched, blinding him and making it difficult to breathe. He didn't even see the tree rising up to meet him until the last moment, and he snapped his wings out in shock and instinct, to slow his descent, but it was too late. He crashed through the branches, and he heard something _snap_.

He didn't remember landing.

Something was pressing uncomfortably into his spine. Something sharp and hard. He groaned, and shifted, but that only shifted whatever was poking into him too. And he began to notice other sharp, or rough, or generally uncomfortable things pressing against him. And _everything_ hurt.

He forced himself into a sitting position and almost cried out from pain. He was battered and bruised, bloodied in places, but his wing had the worse of it. One was…strained and a bit twisted, but the other was clearly broken, in at least two places. He tried to move it, and then he did cry out. He bit his tongue to staunch the sound, and looked around him. He had forgotten, in his disorientation, that he had escaped, that he was _outside_ for the first time…well, ever. His pain was forgotten as he gazed around him in wonder, soft sunlight filtering through a canopy of green. It smelled fresh and clean here, and the breeze pressed fingers against his hair, dried stiff, and littered with twigs and leaves.

He went to stand, and immediately went down again, biting his lip in dismay. Right. He had to…set the limb. He knew that, but…god, trying to remember how it was done….they'd broken his bones before, but Alistair usually set it. Sometimes he wrapped it and sometimes he didn't, depending on what he wanted to "learn." Angel wanted to splint the wing. He could figure things out with a broken finger or wrist, but he needed his wings.

He scoured the area around him. He'd broken many branches in his fall it seemed, some of which would do fine for splinting. He searched around for something to tie the branches in place as well, and eventually found a few thin vines, before deciding to unthread the drawstring from the trousers he wore. They were rather the worse for wear, these pants, he thought. They were torn and threadbare. He'd have to find something else to wear pretty soon. They hung low on his hips without the drawstring, but he needed it for the splint.

This would hurt. He murmured a few comforting words to himself, before taking a thick looking branch and placing it between his teeth, then setting up a few smaller branches that he would use to splint the broken bones and keep them in first two were small breaks, and he used thin, but sturdy branches and the vines. The last break was one of the bigger, ridge bones and he knew it would hurt to set. Angel took several deep breaths through his nose, trying to calm and prepare himself. _Count of three_, he told himself. _One. Two_. and he snapped the bone in place before he could psych himself out. He tied the splint in place quickly and with shaking arms before he spat out the branch, imprints of his teeth sunk deep into the wood, and passed out.

He woke to a strange snuffing sound and hot air on his face. He forced his mind back to the present, the woods where he had landed after his escape from the Company. He felt something cold press against his stomach, and he twitched slightly, and opened his eyes. A huge, furry black face, with onyx eyes stared back at him.

The bear opened its mouth and made a warning sort of growl, and Angel held himself very still, meeting its eyes with curiosity. He'd never seen an animal, not in person, not for real. How interesting, that his first animal other than humans he'd ever seen was a bear. It nudged him again, huffing out a breath. He wrinkled his nose slightly at the hot air that hit him in the face. Bears, he decided, definitely were not known for good dental hygiene.

He wasn't really afraid of this bear though, he saw no reason for it. If it was going to hurt him, it probably would have done so when he was asleep. He pushed himself up to his elbows, and the bear growled at him until he lay down again. He flicked his good wing slightly and the bear sniffed at it, distracted.

The bear mostly ignored him, just shoved its nose back against his stomach, and Angel gave a small snort. It was cold, and it have tickled. He put his hand on the bear's head. "Stop," he said. "Tal'Nuam." He hadn't used that first language of him for a long time. It was easier to communicate with humans in one of their languages, but to his surprise, the bear did stop, and whined a bit at him. But it did let him up.

Angel stretched out his good wing and let the bad one hang as the splints demanded. He'd heal quickly, he knew, he always did, but…it would not be easy until he did. His feet were soft and unused to anything but smooth ground. The woods did not seem to have anything that was smooth at all. He had no food, no water…he'd survived for quite some time without either of course, but he'd need them eventually. He didn't really know what was safe to eat out here, or even exactly where they were in the world. America, he thought, but really, it could be anywhere. Well, not anywhere, but it was clearly a temperate climate, and that made the exact 'where' difficult to pin down. The bear growled at him again and pushed at him with its nose. It seemed to want him to walk, so walk he did.

He didn't know exactly why the bear wasn't either leaving him alone or running him off, as the books had suggested bears did, but it seemed prudent to just go along with it for now.

His answer came quickly. He was still wincing with every step—branches and stones hurt a ilot/i to walk upon he found. He'd never worn a pair of shoes in his life, but now he found himself wanting a pair—but he almost didn't notice when the bear stopped, until it whined at him again. He paused and turned to see it standing near a tree. He moved pack to it, carefully trying to pick the way that was mostly dirt, and less twig, and he saw what had the bear distressed.

A small cub lay there, half covered by branched—perhaps they'd fallen in the storm? But the cub itself had been dead for at least two days, Angel judged. There were already flies at it's eyes and mouth, and he saw a beetle scuttle away from the fur. The bear—the mother bear, he thought—seemed to be looking at him expectantly. "I can't do anything," he told her. "I am sorry, but…it's dead."

He wasn't sure what had killed it, but some of it's fur did appear matted and thick with congealed blood. Perhaps it had been shot, thought Angel, and had simply bled out. He reached out to touch it, disturbing the flies and making the mother bear growl dangerously. Angel took his hand away and glanced back at the large mammal next to him. She wasn't really watching him, but the bear cub. "It's dead," he told her quietly. "Tal'malprig." The bear seemed to understand this, and he thought if she were human, it might be crying.

But she nudged him again and this time he was following her, instead of walking at her side as she led him deeper into the forest and to a vast fallen tree, easily twice the size of the bear, even when she stood on her hind legs. Inside was a nest of sorts, leaves and moss and fur. He also found some teeth (hers? He wasn't sure), and a claw. He glanced down at the bear's paws, but she seemed to have all her claws intact. And this one was small…he fitted it between his middle and pointer fingers. It might come in handy. It was still sharp, and perhaps he could use it as a tool or a weapon.

The bear definitely seemed expectant of something now. He gave a little bow and thanked her in his language, the language he'd always known and she seemed to understand. She huffed out a breath and left the den, though she seemed to expect him to follow, she didn't look behind. He followed anyway, to a nearby bush. She poked her nose in, and when she pulled it out, she was chewing. He studied the bush and saw, to his delight, some sort of berry hanging there. They were black and plump and looked rather delicious. He reached a hand in, only to scratch himself. He frowned. That was annoying. He'd have to be more careful. Or just suffer the scratches. He was very hungry.

The berries were good, and the dark juices ran down his fingers and his chin. His good wing twitched and ruffled in the wind, grey and black and silver feathers shaking and almost shimmering as they were stirred. Once he had eaten his fill of berries, the bear meandered away. Angel followed. It wasn't long before they stood at a lake, clear and blue and so big Angel thought it might go off the edge of the world. But no, after a few moments, he could make out the shore on the other side, and it was only a lake, after all, not the ocean. He stepped in gingerly, his scrapped and bleeding feet immediately relieved. He bent and cleaned his hands and face, and drank deeply from the water as the bear was doing. They were upstream, which did seem the healthiest thing to do. He had no idea what went on this water, and he didn't want to know. He'd never been sick a day in his life, but he knew that now would be a bad time to start.

"I think I might have to give you a name," he told the bear absently. His voice sounded loud, breaking the stillness of this place. But he felt that he must speak, at least sometimes. It was probably foolish, but he had never yet gone a day without hearing some form of language. He didn't always speak himself, but someone did. And while the bear could understand him when he spoke in the strange, precise language, he didn't understand her, not really. She seemed intent on mothering him, which struck him as strange. He looked human, near enough. Perhaps, though he smelled of interaction with humans, she knew he was not one? It seemed a mystery he would not solve. At least not today. He took another drink from the lake and watched as the sun danced in golden beams, shimmering like jewels on the constant, gentle movement of the water.

"Umf. Stop it Mareka," muttered Angel, burying his face in his arms. He'd been having a lovely dream. Smooth hands threaded through his hair, and someone with twinkling eyes had been laughing in delight. There was a song, too, though he could not make out the words, he had known it.

The bear ignored his mutterings, and batted her nose against his hip again. If he didn't move, she'd use her paws, which would probably end with him bleeding, which he'd like to avoid. Angel groaned, and sat up, glaring at the bear. "What?" he asked. She poked her nose into his neck and he sighed and got up. "Fine," he muttered. "I'm going." He slipped out of the tree, and snapped his wings free.

He'd taken off the splint about a week ago, and he was reveling in the freedom. He practiced flying through the trees sometimes. It was a lot like the obstacle course Azazel had set him. When he could, he flew just above the treetops. He didn't dare go too high though. He had no idea if the Company was looking for him, or what other humans would do if they found him.

He knelt and moved a rock near the trunk of the hollow tree, pulling out and removing the bear claws he'd made for himself. They weren't well made, but he was working on ways to fix them. He'd used the claw he found in the tree, and then, later, had gone back to where the dead bear cub had been, and used the claw, and the metal rod that he'd somehow managed to hang onto, even after the storm, to carefully remove it's claws. Some had snapped, but he was still left with quite a few useable claws. He'd started with a stick and vines, hollowing out little holes on the stick and sticking the claws through before securing it with the vines. That hadn't worked, so he'd tried the other way—shoving the claws through the wood and wrapping the whole stick with the vines. He had spaced them well that time too, and he could hold the sticks with his hands in fists so that the claws poked between his fingers and allowed him some measure of protection and retaliation against Mareka's claws, as well as being sharp enough to pierce wood if he needed extra traction when climbing.

Mareka was teaching him to climb the trees, as she might have taught her cub. In fact, she seemed to be trying to teach him many things, as she might have taught her cub. He still needed a better way of attaching the claw gauntlets though. So that he could use them, if necessary, but he didn't want to leave his hands so useless. He was working on a way to secure them to his hands and wrists in a way that he could be certain they wouldn't fall off.

He still had a bit of thread on his spool, but he knew that wouldn't last long, especially as he had to save it. The days were getting warmer now, but soon they'd be getting colder again and he would never survive out here with just the thin Company trousers. He needed something that would warm him in the winter time. He found himself wishing that Mareka would kill a deer or something, or that he'd find one. The skins could be useful. He thought he more or less remembered how to prepare them too. He just needed to figure out how and where to start a fire. Mareka wouldn't like it, he knew. Perhaps he'd tell her to get over it.

Angel wasn't exactly sure where he'd landed on the name 'Mareka' for the bear. He didn't remember hearing it before, but he liked it. Even if it was a made up word, it suited her, he thought. And it was easier than calling her 'the bear' in his head all the time. And he'd gone too long without a name himself. Even if Mareka didn't care, Angel did. Nothing living should be nameless, to be stripped of them_selves_ in that way.

But he had some ideas for if he could get some leather. Aside from eating meat, which he hadn't really done much before, it would get him the deer skins. He could make trousers from them, good ones, that would keep him warm, and he could make proper gloves. Gloves into which he could sew the bear claws and still have use of the rest of his hands. Possibly he could make something to cover his feet too. They were getting more callused as time went on, but it hadn't been that long yet, and they still blistered and cracked and bled.

He'd work on the climbing and foraging for a bit. When he brought things back to the den it seemed to please Mareka, as much as a bear could be pleased, anyway, and then he'd explore again. He had found some plants the other day that looked like they might make a passable thread, if he stripped them right, and he'd found a bird skeleton (well, mostly a skeleton) that he'd hidden away so he could clean it and use the bones. He wanted to make a stronger needle than the one he had. _That would be another reason to use a deer_ he thought. T_he bones would be a lot stronger. I could make a knife or something._ He'd attempted to make a stone knife, but so far that had proved fruitless. All the stones that he could cut with other stones proved to be too brittle to be an effective could use stones to craft wood, but the only thing he'd managed to make from stones were clumsy clubs, though he was practicing his skills with a 'd need leather for that as well. Angel sighed. He needed a deer. That much was obvious. Perhaps he'd find a kill soon and manage to skin it. Or he'd find a carcass, like the bird, and he'd at least be able to use the bones.

He sighed, and swiped out with a claw tiredly. At lest they were still secure. For now, anyway. He was using the drawstring in the trousers again. They'd never fed him well at the facility, but at least he'd usually been fed. Unless it was one of their tests. Every year they tested to see how long he could go without certain things: food, drink, sleep. Every year he managed for longer before they inevitably had to fill him with fluids intravenously. But other than those tests or other sorts of punishments, he was fed three times a day. Never anything more than the bare minimum, but it was enough to keep him going. He wasn't dealing with true hunger yet, but he was moving in ways he'd never really moved before. It wasn't physical training in Azazel's sense, and he wasn't getting all the nutrients he needed anymore.

"I guess that's one thing they did," he said. "At least most of the time. I had food, unless I was bad or they were testing me." He sighed. "I can't live off fruit and roots forever though." He'd need some decent protein soon. Mareka might help him a few times, but he couldn't eat the meat raw, he knew that much. Well, he suspected. He still had to figure out how to build a fire though. It was proving a lot more difficult that he'd expected. He'd never read much about wilderness survival, as he never expected to be in the wilderness. He knew enough about chemistry and physics that he thought he could figure it out, but he hadn't managed it yet.

Angel was getting better at climbing the trees, though he didn't think he'd ever be as good as Mareka. His toes were better at finding footholes in rock than bark. He could thank Azazel's rock wall for that.

The day he managed to make fire was a triumphant one in more ways than just that. He'd managed to fashion a hook out of the bird bones he'd found several days before, and he had enough twine from the string-giving plant (he had no idea what to call it, but his seemed an apt name), and he had managed to bait a fish with a worm on the string tied to a long stick that he'd propped up in the sand. His first fish. He knew that people ate raw fish. He'd read of it. The idea didn't really appeal to him though, and he was more determined than ever to figure out how to make the fire. He'd tried several thinks in the past that simply hadn't worked.

This time though, with a flat piece of driftwood he'd dried, enough of a hole cut into the wood, with the grass and leaves he'd collected and enough friction and oxygen…he managed to get a spark. He had all but held his breath as he carefully fed leaves and then small twigs and finally bigger branches, tee-pee-ing them so that they would get oxygen and the smoke had somewhere to go, but soon he had a pretty decent fire. He cheered. He'd have to make sure he always had some dry sticks and leaves, but he'd be able to replicate this achievement.

Trying to cook the fish was somewhat more difficult. He decided, just in case, he'd catch another. He re-baited the hook and replaced it into the water before jamming a sharp stick into the mouth of the fish and holding it over the fire. He had no idea if this would work or not. He wished he'd thought to get a stone or something to set the fish on, or that he had a decent knife to gut it, but he figured…he could cook it thoroughly enough that it didn't matter.

It didn't take long before it was hissing and sizzling over the fire, the scales darkening. It started slipping off the stick and he tried to prop it up with another one…and then the whole thing caught on fire. He yelped and dropped it over the sand, beating out the flames, smothering them with the sand. When he pulled up the rather blackened fish, he sighed. Still, he washed the sand off in the river and ate it. He'd figure out something better, he thought, pulling the hook back in and wrapping it around the makeshift pole. Something that wouldn't catch on fire. Maybe he could figure out something with rocks. Or wet wood, maybe.

The last thing that happened that day was that he found a good portion of a rather large animal. There was no skin, just scattered bones, but it definitely looked to be a deer to him. Which meant that soon, he might find one with skin still intact. As it was, he took a few of the bones. He could make knives or more hooks, or needles with them. Arrowheads, he thought. He could make arrows for when he figured out how to make a proper bow.

He had been bathing in the lake when he heard the sound. The lake was always very cold now, as spring days turned to autumn. But he froze when he heard the noise, and slicked his hair back so it would be out of his face as he turned to peer at the woods behind him. Something was off, he just couldn't quite tell what. He slipped from the water and picked up the knife he'd made from one of the deer bones. It wasn't sharp on the sides really, it was mostly good for puncturing, but he hadn't figured out a good way to make a knife that was both sturdy and sharp on the edge.

All the stone knives he'd tried his hand at making were far too brittle. So he was stuck with his bone weapons, as he scanned the foliage.

He kept low and tense, and he was glad of it when, moments later, a huge mass of fur and teeth launched out of the trees at him. The wolf was large, and seemed intent on eating him. He jabbed up with his knife, pricking the creature in the leg, which mostly seemed to anger it, but at least he had space to get out from under it. He splashed back into the water, making his way toward his new and improved fire pit. He'd used the metal rod as an anchor of sorts, and he could use it as a spit if he had to, propped up on thick branches. But he managed to grab the rod as the wolf leaped again, and he swung, hard, catching the wolf in the side and causing it to give a little pained whine. He thought he might have heard a rib crack. It growled and advanced on him again. "Tal'nuam!" he yelled. "Darebesa hami!" He readied the knife in his left hand, the rod in his right, knife ready to jab and puncture, the rod cocked to swing. The wolf had frozen immediately on Angel's command though. It looked a bit stunned (as much as such an expression was possible) and wary, as it's gaze flicked to the rod. Angel's wings were flared as wide as they'd go, making him look much larger than he was. And he was bleeding from where the wolf had scratched him, breathing hard. But he looked the wolf directly in the eyes, and the wolf whined, before rolling over and baring it's stomach.

Angel set his weapons down and approached the wolf, pressing one hand on it's chest and flaring his wings again. Then he moved, and let the wolf up. He needed to wash his wound and dress. The wolf gave a howl behind him, just as he finished cleaning the still sluggishly bleeding injury. He lunged out of the water, picking up the rod and knife again, but as the other wolves came out of the woods, they sniffed at him and growled a bit. One in particular seemed to hate him. Until he realized that this was the alpha, and he showed his own submission, dropping his weapons and exposing his neck. The alpha nipped at it, presumably to show Angel who was boss, and left. Angel pulled the rapidly deteriorating trousers on again, and picked up both knife and rod. He used it as a walking stick now, but he wanted to be able to defend himself.

The wolves led him to the rocky area where they made their den. It was difficult to get to, and nearly impossible to see. There'd be another exit somewhere, but he wasn't fully Pack. He didn't get to know all their secrets. There were three pups that looked hungry, which, he imagined, is why the scout had tried to kill him. He knew that wolves didn't go after humans much, but then…he wasn't human, and he probably smelled more of bear right now than anything, even if he looked fairly human.

He was curious though, and he let the wolf pups climb over him and bat at his wings. He always batted back.

It was later that afternoon when one of the scouts let out a howl that had the wolves in the den's ears pricking. Angel followed them when they left, though he only managed to keep up with them if he flew. An elk stood near a little stream Angel hadn't seen before. It was drinking calmly, but when it saw the wolves it panicked. It must have heard them, Angel thought, but that didn't matter, because the wolves were attacking from all sides. One got in the way of the elks powerful kick and went flying. Angel came down from above, cracking the creature in the head, under the antlers, then again on the side of the neck. It gave the wolves the opportunity they needed to go for the throat.

The elk went down rather easily after that. The alpha would have eaten his fill then, but Angel stepped in. He needed the skin. The wolves could wait for a bit while he took at least one of the sides. He tried to convey to the alpha that he wasn't going to eat before him, nor take any choice meats, he just wanted a bit of the hide. The bits that tasted nasty, he tried to explain. The alpha didn't like it, growling and advancing on Angel. He sighed. Fine. He'd just wait. He'd use the other side, he thought. He backed away and let the wolves rip into the creature.

They had eaten their fill eventually, and taken what they wanted, so Angel approached the grisly scene and shoved and heaved until he'd gotten the massive elk flipped over. That was probably gross, and the squishing between his toes was definitely not mud. He tried not to gag. He was about to get a lot bloodier. As an afterthought, he removed the trousers again. They were not holding up very well as it was, and he didn't need to get blood on them. Especially not elk blood. That would just make him smell like prey.

It took him a few tries to figure out how to skin the thing without a proper knife. He eventually settled on a puncture and pull technique that was effective, but it took him a long time. The sun had gone down completely by the time he had a big enough piece. He didn't really want to see the elk now, but he sawed off a few bits of meat for himself and found the trousers and rod again. He didn't really want to pick them up with as bloody as he'd managed to get. It defeated the purpose of removing them in the first place. But he decided that a few spots of blood were different than being totally covered, so he set on his way.

The next several days involved cleaning and drying the leather, beating it into something like submission, and figuring out how to make trousers from it. He made a little loincloth first, from some of the scraps, just to see how his needle and thread held up. He used the rest of his thread, but he managed to use the string from that string-plant and some of the reeds from the lake to make a strong enough substitute. The bone needles worked better, and in the end, he had a rather patchwork skirt with an extra bit at each end so he could knot it around his waist and be sure it wouldn't fall off.

Better than nothing, he supposed. But it was time to try the pants. He used the company trousers as a guide, though he made the leather outlines bigger and longer. He had just enough, in the end, to make a proper pair of trousers. What he wouldn't give for a proper knife, he mused, grimly. But, by the end of the fifth day after the elk, he had a lovely pair of elkskin trousers. He hoped they stayed that way. He had no idea if he'd treated it long enough, or if he'd done it right.

There wasn't more than scraps left of the elk-skin, but he did manage to rig up a half-glove. He sewed the wood piece holding the bear claws into two pieces of leather, then worked several more scraps together until he had something similar to brass knuckles, except made of leather, wood, and bear claws. It only went partway over his hand, though he did make it fit around his palm. And this way, his hand would still be open to do other things, but he could keep the claw on. At least, on one hand. He'd go back to the elk and see if there was anything left.

Or any of the wolf. Wolf-skin, he thought, could be useful in winter trousers. Rabbits too, but it would take more rabbits than wolves.

The elk was gone, not much left but bones and a few scraps of rotten meat, but the wolf it had kicked hadn't gotten far. It wasn't one that had come to investigate Angel, but it had met a rather rough end, which saddened him. It too was partially eaten and decomposing. It wasn't so bad if he held his breath. He really needed a proper knife though. He gagged his way through his task of skinning the creature, and though he washed out the skin as best he could, it still rather smelled. He rolled it in dirt and leaves for a bit too, then took it back to the lake.

He walked as far downstream as he could that day (he didn't want to do the disgusting task of cleaning out rotting skin and clinging bits of meat in the area where he drank his own water) before drinking, then washing himself, and finally, the wolfskin again. He rubbed it in the sand as well, then back in the water. He stretched it out in the sun, and for two days, waited for it to dry.

He took the skin back to the hollow tree den he still shared with Mareka. It was safe and warm here. A place where he knew he could relax enough to open his worn little bag and pull out a waterproof children's book that had secret, fading pictures stuffed against the bindings to prevent them getting stolen or wet. There was a dictionary, though many of the pages were ruined by water, and there was a fantasy novel that he had been reading when he'd escaped. He looked through the photos often. He didn't remember taking any of them, but he remembered Mary. He touched her face with a finger, and sighed, closing the book and putting it back in the bag. It would come with him when he left Mareka in the spring.

She didn't help him much anymore, but she didn't bother him, and he hadn't bothered finding a place of his own in the forest yet. He would wait until after winter. He had a feeling he'd need her warmth to stay alive, especially if he was still struggling to create clothes for himself that would fit.

By the time the first snow fell, Angel had succeeded in making some basic coverings for his feet, finishing the bear claw cloves entirely, and coming up with a way to ensure he didn't get _too_ cold when he ventured outside. He'd taken the wolf pelt and cut it into several strips. Four of these he ensured would fit over each thigh and shin, before cutting up the Company trousers, and using the fabric to make ties. He could tie the wolf skin over his legs. The leather, mixed with the pelts, was fairly warm. Warm enough anyway, though he still didn't have anything proper to fit over his slim torso. His wings did keep some of the chill away, when he had them wrapped around him like a cloak.

He had managed to improve his knife and he kept it sharp. Mareka was actually out at the moment, leaving heavy footprints in the snow. She'd go back to sleep before long. She'd probably just get a drink and try to find a fat squirrel or some winter berries. Angel took to following her because she was very good at finding things to eat. The wolves were good at it too, and he still accompanied them on hunts at times. But today was for Mareka, and he followed her silently. If he had too, he could catch something she'd scared toward him, or he could frighten something toward her.

It worked well, their unspoken system. Angel was following behind as usual, when something caught his eye. A glint in the cold winter sun. He ducked behind a tree and peered out carefully. It was definitely still there. He slipped closer, barely breathing. When he saw what it was, he did stop.

A human, gun in hand, lining up a shot. Angel glanced to where it would land, though he already knew. Mareka. "No!" he yelled leaping at the man as he pulled the trigger. The shot went wide and Angel landed on top of the man, knees over the human's chest, knife at his throat and claw glove inches from his eyes.

Something about those huge green eyes though….was very familiar.

**Enochian Translations/notes**

**Darebesa: Obey**

**Hami: Creatures**

**_Ripir: No place_**

**Tal : N**

**Nuam : Continuance.**

**Here I have used the phrase Tal'Nuam to mean 'no continuance' or 'stop.' I couldn't find an exact translation so I improvised. Sue me.**

**One source told me that Malprig meant 'life' though it is probably one of many that means that, so I just did the same made-up thing where I made the 'n' the negative. **


	8. Dean

Dean stretched out in his bed, relishing the warmth of the covers. Usually he'd be anxious and concerned, but Sammy had arrived back in town yesterday, and he'd be here for the rest of the month, before going back to school. Sam was in town and John _wasn't_ which meant things would be a lot calmer than last time. John had left two days before Sam had returned. Dean wondered if he'd done it on purpose. It didn't matter. He'd gotten to see his dad, and John had left him a great new gun as an 'early birthday present' and now he'd get to spend some quality time with his brother too. Last time there had been a lot of fighting, with Sam and John almost constantly at each other's throats. Dean had escaped to the woods almost daily, just to try and stay out of it. He wouldn't have to do that this time.

He could relax, and Sammy would relax, and there'd be beer and movies and snowball fights. He hummed, plans running through his head. Something crashed from the kitchen and he sighed. Right. He'd forgotten about Jessica. Sam had brought a 'friend' from school. Both of them swore up and down it was just because her parents were in Egypt for winter break, and that they were just friends, but Dean could see through that bullshit. Especially if she was making breakfast. She wasn't sleeping in Sam's room, but that didn't mean much. It was Bobby's house. Sam wouldn't do anything stupid in Bobby's house. Not again anyway, there had been that one time with his little brother's on-again, off-again evil girlfriend Ruby, but that had been four years ago now.

There was another clatter from the kitchen so Dean sighed, and, though reluctant to get out of bed, pushed away the covers and shivered in the chilly air. He really needed to see about getting his window properly sealed up. He was sure there was a crack somewhere that let in freezing air, no matter how high the heat was. He had taken to sleeping in socks just to avoid his feet freezing off when he woke up winter mornings.

He pulled on jeans and a long sleeve t-shirt, layering it with a short sleeve shirt and an over-shirt of dark blue cotton. He made his way down the stairs, yawning loudly. "What's for breakfast?"

Jessica cocked an eyebrow at him. "What are you going to eat? I have no idea," she said. "I'm making French Toast and eggs for me and Sam." He reached out with a fork to steal an egg and she whacked him with a spoon. "Hands off Winchester," she said. "You want some, make your own."

"Aw," he whined. "But yours is so much _better_."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," she said severely.

"I don't wanna go anywhere. Will flattery get me eggs?" He batted his eyelashes and flashed her his patented charming smile.

"Not even," she said, shoving him a little. "And Sam is only getting food because this was the bet."

"The bet?" When had they made a bet?

"I lost the Mario Party Game last night," she sighed. "We were over at that Ruby girl's house. I didn't drink, because I was DD, but I lost, so instead of having to do the truly horrible shot, I have to make breakfast for the winner. Which happened to be Sam."

"Who else was at this party?" asked Dean, a bit suspiciously.

"I know you don't like Ruby," said Jessica, "and honestly, she creeps me out too. But she behaved perfectly. No one got too smashed and she was polite. She did grab Sam's ass, but Pamela at school does that too. It's sort of grabbable."

"Uh, ew," he said. "I don't need to hear about my brother's ass."

"What about my ass?" asked a bleary Sam.

"Nothing!" cried Dean.

"It's grabbable," said Jessica at the same time.

"Dean wants to grab my ass?"

"No!" howled Dean, and Jessica cracked up. But she put three plates of Toast and eggs on the table, and he grinned at her then. "Aw, I knew you liked me."

"Actually, I just fee sorry for you," she said. "Sam says you couldn't operate your way around a kitchen if your life depended on it."

"That's not true," he said. "I just…don't, if people are around to do it for me."

"And if they aren't?"

"Cereal," chimed in Sam. "He orders take out or makes cereal."

"Traitor," muttered Dean.

"Ingrate," was the retort.

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

"Would you guys just shut up and eat your damn food before it gets cold?" demanded Jessica. Both brothers laughed, and Sam nudged her shoulder, but they did as instructed.

"Jesus Jess," muttered Sam. 'If I'd known your eggs would be this rubbery I'd've made Dean do it."

"Hey, you didn't ask for _good_ food, you just asked for breakfast. I never said I could cook," she pointed out.

Dean laughed. "She totally out-lawyered you there," he said.

"One, Lawyered isn't a word, and Two, I am not a lawyer yet," sniffed Sam. "I have two more years of school before I even start to consider law schools."

"And I'm not gonna be a lawyer anyway," said Jessica. "I'm studying biochemical engineering."

"Jesus," muttered Dean. "How do you survive all these smart people Sammy?"

"I'm smart too," replied Sam.

"Is everyone at Stanford as smart as you Jess?"

"Not hardly," she sniffed. "A lot of people wish they were though," she added, with a wicked grin. "Including Rapunzel over there." She jabbed at Sam with her fork.

"You like my hair," muttered Sam, flushing.

"Like it? It's better than mine," she said. "And longer than half the girls in my major."

"So it's jealousy."

Jessica rolled her eyes. "Whatever helps you sleep at night Samsquatch."

Dean smirked. "Good one," he said. They exchanged a high five, leaving Sam looking rather pained.

"What did I do to deserve this?" he asked. "To either of you?"

Dean was about to respond, when Bobby stomped in, gun in hand, looking pissed. Also cold. But mostly pissed.

"Fuckin' animal got into the Yard again," he said. "Wrecked a car pretty good."

"What sort of animal?" asked Dean. "How could it wreck a car?"

"And….you know. Why?" added Sam.

"There's been reports of wolves and bobcats and things," said Bobby. "They're comin' closer to town 'cause the bigger predators are takin' up their huntin' space. There's tell of a bear." He glanced at Dean, raising his eyebrows.

Ah, thought Dean. Definitely more to this bear than met the eye then. He could tell Sam later, but Jess…Jess didn't know about the monsters. He gave a sharp nod to Bobby. There'd be a hunt later then. Whatever this 'bear' was, it was likely something that escaped a few months ago when that weird earthquake or whatever it had been hit the area. Bobby had pointed out the Company once, said his mom had worked there. Dad said it was the work that had killed her.

But monsters had escaped recently, and several had made their way in the woods. As far as he'd heard, the Company was collecting them all up as fast as they could, but it wasn't proving to be all that effective. But he knew these woods, at least, he knew quite a bit of them. He could find this 'bear' (black dog, maybe? Shifter of some kind?) and put it down.

He finished his breakfast and geared up to go. Jess wanted to get a head start on some reading, so Dean pulled Sam aside and told him to gear up. Sam had nodded, and told Jess he was going out with Dean for a bit.

They slipped as silently as they could through the woods, keeping their distance from each other. That way, if managed to off-put one of them, the other would be able to sneak up on it.

He hid behind a tree, his knife out and ready as he saw Dean carefully take cover and line up for the shot. He didn't see what Dean did, there were too many trees in the way, but at least if it came toward him he would be ready to defend himself.

There was a sudden noise and a shot, startling a flock of birds and making something close by growl, but Sam's eyes were fixed on Dean, and the winged _thing_ holding him down, gun out of reach.

Dean immediately tried to launch a counter attack on the person or thing that had dropped him so suddenly (and seriously, where had he come from, the sky?) but was frozen by the fucking _claws_ in front of his eyes, and the hand at his throat. He went cross-eyed for a moment, trying to get a measure of the claws, though his attacker didn't seem intent on mauling.

He…or it…did seem to be bare-chested though which was very odd. Who the hell didn't wear a shirt when there was snow on the ground? He tried not to look too cocky, but Sam would kill the thing in a second or at least, get it off him, so he couldn't really help it. That is, until it whipped it's head around so fast Dean thought he heard a crack and launched something directly at Sam. "Sammy!" Dean screamed.

"He is unhurt," growled the—Dean guessed he was a sort of man. What sort of cloak or whatever was he wearing though?—but his voice was….incredibly low and deep, almost a growl. "Merely not going anywhere. " He turned his fierce, ice-blue gaze on the younger boy whom was currently pinned to a tree with the slightly improved dagger piercing through his parka. He'd dropped his own knife.

Angel gazed at it curiously. He'd take that, he decided. The knife would be useful. "Why are you attempting to harm Mareka?" he demanded to the familiar looking green-eyed man under him, pressing the claw-glove slightly into his face. Not enough to bleed, but it would scratch.

"Who? Look, there's a monster in the woods and it's causing some panic in the town and we thought it might be a shifter or a black dog of some kind. I don't care if you don't believe me, that's the truth."

"There is a monster," he growled. "It is not what you think."

Dean swallowed, still trying hard to focus on anything but the claws and mostly failing. "Look," he said. "It's hurting people and destroying things so we have to kill it before it does some real damage."

"It harms _no one_!" he all but snarled. "It harms no human, doesn't leave the woods, it hides and protects itself, no more."

"Well it's forcing the other animals out and ithey/i are causing damage which is just as bad. We…we won't kill it then, if you don't like that um. Dude." Seriously, what was this guy? Some sort of freaky monster lover?

"Dean…" Sam's voice was uncertain.

"Seriously," continued Dean, ignoring Sam for the moment. He was fine apparently. "We'll just…take him to that Company place, they just sort of research the monsters there, no one gets hurt."

The fear that flashed in the man's eyes was unexpected. "No," he whispered. "No, you can't. " His hand twitched on Dean's throat.

He heard Sam's voice. "We won't tell," he said frantically. "I promise. We won't tell anyone, and you can just….do your thing, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone."

"I've never hurt anyone!" the man said, angrily, turning to look at where Dean assumed Sam was. "Not ever in my life. I never fought back, I stopped asking questions. I will not be sent back there." He looked, from Dean's perspective, by turns furious, terrified, and determined. But he was also unbalanced, which is all Dean needed to twist and shove the man off of him.

Dean was up in a moment, but so was the man that had attacked him. And he saw clearly just what he had been talking to the whole time. It wasn't a cloak, but wings stretching from his back. He wore what looked like mostly fur pants and possibly leather shoe-type coverings on his feet, and nothing on his torso, which was red and blue with cold. His hands had what looked like crude leather gloves, each fashioned with the claws Dean had been so concerned about. The creature moved suddenly, and came up with Sam's knife. He didn't hold it at a threatening angle, but he did hold it ready (if unpracticed).

"I will not go back," he said, firmly.

"We won't make you," said Sam hands up, though he posed no threat, pinned as he was. "Just…tell us what you are."

"I'm nothing," he retorted. "Just a monster. They never figured out what I was."

Dean and Sam glanced at each other, slightly disbelieving. "You're joking. How long were you there? Were you new?"

"There was never anything _but _there," he said backing away. "Just their cages and their testing. For my whole life. And now I'm out and I will die before I go back." It didn't sound dramatic when he said it. Just…factual.

"And you haven't hurt anyone?"

"No. And neither has Mareka." He gestured, though the bear was gone. "I haven't encountered any monsters in these woods," he said. "None but me, and no one's killed things or gone to town that shouldn't have. I didn't realize it was so close," he added, unnerved.

"It's not. It's a few miles away. Can you…let me down?"

"No. Your….Dean you called him? He can. So long as he leaves the gun there."

"You know what a gun is?"

"I've read," he said. "And seen pictures. Let…Sammy? Down. And then you will leave. And not come back."

Dean wasted no time in getting his brother down. Sam actually smiled at the winged man. "I'm Sam," he said, getting an incredulous look from both Dean and winged-monster alike. "This is my brother, Dean. Who are you?"

Sam and Dean. How interesting. Mary's sons had been…he stared at the two boys more intently. Yes. It could be a coincidence. Or he could be looking at Mary's son's grown up. The thought was….shocking. He stepped backwards. "Do you have a name?" the younger one, Sam, asked again.

"…Angel," he said, after a lengthy pause. "I am called Angel."

Bela sometimes wished she didn't owe the Company so much. She had all but sold her soul to them it felt like, but her contract wasn't up with them yet. She couldn't just leave. And she had to do everything they said.

She remembered Angel. She remembered Mary's coddling the boy, remembered talking to him in French and teaching him Frere Jacque. And the Company had lost him. To be fair, the Company had lost one-third of their monsters in the earthquake. She still wasn't sure how natural it had been. There wasn't a fault around here, really. Not that she knew of, anyway. And it had been _so_ localized.

But it wasn't her job to ask questions. Well, technically, at the moment, it was her job, but not about natural or unnatural phenomena. Just the monsters. They'd had people in the area before, just looking, but only one creature had not been caught. Lilith had been certain that U009WC2B had gotten quite far away, and had sent people combing the woods and towns. But the man Bela answered to, he thought the monster might not have gotten quite so far away. So she found herself in the town closest to the Company, but not on Company property. They owned a small compound where most of it's workers lived, but Bela knew that Mary at least, had lived here. And this is where her boss thought Angel might be hiding out. _No_, she thought. _Not Angel. The monster. U009WC2B_. Giving it a name had been a mistake. Even in her head.

Bela straightened her shoulders. She'd just stay for a few days, ask around. If no one had seen anything she'd be able to tell pretty quickly.

Angel had to admit…it was a little improbable that he'd meet two brothers called Sam and Dean. They'd even be the right age to be Mary's children. Well. He supposed the only way to find out was to ask.

"Are you by any chance…the children of Mary?" he asked. He had no idea what her last name was though he imagined she had one. Most people in his books had last names.

Dean did a double take, before smoothing his expression out, though he'd already rather given himself away, thought Angel.

"Who the hell are you?" he demanded. "And how do you know our mom?"

"She used to…teach me," he said. "And she convinced….others to do the same. Before she…" he didn't remember exactly what had happened to her. She'd just…stopped coming.

Sam shoved Dean's shoulder a little. "Dean…"

"Shut it," he muttered back. Something was stirring in his mind though. A story. He remembered telling stories to Sam about a boy with wings. He vaguely remembered demanding Mom to tell him stories of an Angel. Or had that been his name? Were the stories based on a real…John had said that Mary worked with monsters, he thought vaguely. Was it possible that this was one of them?

"I have pictures," Angel offered, after a moment. "Just…don't try to kill anything, please. I promise you that nothing here is a danger to your home."

Dean was still…wary, but Sam was interested, and pointed out that while the creature could have killed them easily, he hadn't.

"Maybe he's waiting till we get back to his lair," muttered Dean.

Sam had just given him a patient look. "Look," he said, "if he was going to kill us, he has already had ample opportunity. He saw me coming at him with a knife and all he did was pin me to a tree. Through the hood of my parka. I mean…that was a great shot. I think we can trust him."

Dean hadn't really wanted to, but eventually he did follow the other two. The…monster, Angel, had tucked his wings around himself again, sort of a makeshift coat or something, and was leading the way through the snow.

"Mareka…the bear, she lives here," he said. "So I'm going to ask you stay here," he said. "I'll get the photos and bring them out to you. I can make her understand some things, but she won't like humans in her den."

Dean didn't like that either, staying where he lost sight of Angel. But the other man returned in fewer than five minutes, with a bag held tightly in his arms. The bag was dirty and weather-stained, but mostly well-maintained. Angel pulled out a book.

"Goodnight Moon?" asked Dean. "Seriously?" Angel just looked at him, and Dean went a little red. "Okay. Sorry."

Angel opened it and held out a picture of the woman, handing the book to Sam. "The pages are waterproof," he said. "If they could have, they would have taken everything. I didn't let them, but I didn't want to ruin the photos."

Sam stared at the pictures, showing them to Dean as he leafed through the book. "That's…that's you," he whispered. "Dean you've got the same picture in your room, the one of all of us."

Angel shifted. "She gave them to me," he said, suddenly a bit terrified that they'd take the pictures away from him. He held out his hand for the book. "I proved to you that she knew me."

Dean was still staring at the photo of the small boy with grey wings and his mother, the boy looking confused, blue eyes wide and blue and guileless, and his mother, part of her head cut off by the top of the photo, smiling with one hand curled around the child.

"So. You're about my age then," he said, a bit faintly.

"I….suppose," said Angel. "I…I remember she said her son was about my age. "

Dean nodded, thinking, and Sam handed the book back. "Do you mind if…if I come back sometime?" Sam asked. "I want to take some pictures with my phone of the photos mom gave you. After the fire…we don't have much left of her."

Angel considered this. "You won't bring people after me?" he asked. "I won't have to go back to the Company?"

Dean shook his head. "Hell no." He sounded angry. "They had you in there when you were fucking _three"_

"I…yes."

"I thought the Company only keeps dangerous monsters locked up."

"I don't know," he said. "I was there for as long as I can remember."

"You never left?" asked Sam, a bit stunned. "I mean…never?"

"No," replied Angel, patiently. He'd thought that was obvious. Hadn't he said that before? "I had never left the building until the earthquake."

"You never even went _outside_?" Dean's voice was incredulous and a bit higher than usual.

"I _said_ that," replied Angel, a little testily.

"Right," said Dean, quickly. "Sorry. But…dude, if we promise to keep your secret…we can come back? To…talk or whatever? You can't have met too many nice people," he grinned, a little weakly. "And our mom liked you. She told me stories, when I was a kid. The boy with wings. He was always saving me."

"I have never saved anyone," replied Angel, confused.

"In the stories," explained Dean. "I'll tell you one, next time. But…we should probably go now. We've been gone a while and Sam's girlfriend'll be wondering where he's gone."

"Jess is not my girlfriend," protested Sam.

"The lady doth protest too much," teased Dean.

"You know _MacBeth"_ asked Angel, cocking his head.

"Dude, _you_ know _MacBeth_?" asked Dean, incredulous.

"Of course," he said. "I have read all of Shakespeare's plays. I like Chekov's better. Though…his are better if you read them in the original Russian," he admitted.

"You read _Russian_?" Dean was feeling fairly mindblown.

Sam shoved him. "Dude, just cause he keeps the pictures in a baby book does not mean that's his reading level."

Dean flushed. "That isn't what I….dude! I didn't…" but really, he sort of had. The monster had never left his cage, why would they teach him to read? And other languages?

"I was told it was your mother's doing," said Angel, calmly, un-offended. "She thought I might be intelligent, and so she convinced-" he swallowed, not liking to think about Lilith and the others, "those in charge that I might be taught. That research of monsters involved seeing what they were capable of, which included learning. She thought because I was young, they'd have a better chance. Even when she…died, they took her advice on that. I learned how to read and write, and math and theoretical sciences. I wasn't allowed to do experiments."

"And…did you have like, weapons training?" asked Sam. "Just they way you took us down was impressive."

Angel shook his head. "They wanted to see what I was physically capable of, so they did tests. Coordination, balance, agility. I merely had to learn, when I escaped, how to apply that. I…am still learning."

"So. Um. Why don't you have a shirt?" Dean had been wondering this for a long time, and the question just bubbled out. Sam looked annoyed. Angel simply tilted his head in slight confusion.

"How could I?" he asked. "There is nothing that could fit over my wings, and no way to fold them up enough to work through fabric. I had a blanket for a while. It was warm. They burned it years ago though, which is why I started carrying the photos with me."

Sam nodded slowly. "Don't you…aren't you cold?"

Angel shifted uncomfortably. "I'm…coping," he said. "I can survive quite a lot. They tested that thoroughly. "

Dean wanted to…well, he wasn't sure. Ask more questions. Help. Do _something,_ "We…We'll come back, yeah?" he asked. "Just to check up. Make sure you know. Things are still cool."

"I will check with the wolves," said Angel. "If it is they who are causing trouble in your town, I will make sure they stop. But…I do not think it is them. They have plenty of game in the woods. And they would not hurt a human."

Dean wanted to know how he was going to 'check' with the wolves but he figured that question could wait for another day.

By this time, Angel had walked them back to the clearing where they'd crashed into each other and Dean picked up the gun. He'd have to clean it really carefully to make sure it was alright after so long in the snow.

"See ya Angel," he said with a little grin. "We'll come back."

Angel watched as two human backs disappeared through the trees and wondered what, exactly, had just happened.


	9. Winter

Angel had gone to the wolves. He didn't see them as often as he did Mareka, though he'd given them names, mostly after characters from the Jungle Book. He'd told them that if it was they going to town, that the humans would put a stop to it. He didn't understand the Bagheera's response, but he took it to mean that either the message was received or that the wolves weren't going anywhere near the town. Either way, he had at least warned them to be careful. They'd follow his advice. He hoped it would be enough to protect them.

Bobby was surprised when they came back empty handed after being gone so long. Sam went to go make a few excuses to Jess, and Dean stayed behind and tried to come up with an explanation that would satisfy Bobby.

"I don't think there's a monster in there Bobby," he said. "Wild animals, yeah, but we had to go crazy far to find traces of anything dangerous. There wasn't any sign that they were coming out of the woods either." He furrowed his brow. "If it _is_ a shifter, maybe it only wants you to think it's in the woods? To avoid suspicion or something."

"You think there's a monster in _town?"_ asked Bobby, incredulously. "Do you iknow/i how many wards we have around this place?"

"Ward can be broken or changed or…ways found around them," pointed out Dean. "And maybe whatever is causing all the damage was here before the Wards were put up, or before they were strengthened. Or maybe whatever it is isn't affected by the wards we have. I don't know, we'll keep looking. Just…whatever it is isn't in the woods." He'd hate himself forever if it turned out that Angel was lying. But Sam trusted him, and Dean…found himself doing it too. Trusting a monster was never a good idea, but….Angel didn't seem like a monster to him. Just a man with wings.

Bobby was rather unconvinced, but he didn't argue it further. He'd strengthen the wards against every evil thing he knew of, and he'd keep an eye on Dean. And Sam, he thought. Sam had been with Dean the whole time. And there was definitely something they were not telling him. He'd raised the both of them. He knew when they were lying.

Angel is surprised, when Dean proves to be as good as his word and returns to the wood the next day. "Sammy has to spend the day with his _girlfriend_," he said, grinning. "Because she spent all of yesterday studying, and he spent it here, so he's gotta take her to a movie or something today."

"Oh," said Angel, eyes wide. "Is that how it works?"

Dean chuckles, and Angel thought the sound was one of the best things he'd ever heard. "Nah, not really," he said. "They say they aren't even actually dating, but…I dunno. I see the way they look at each other. If they _aren't_ dating, they definitely should be."

Angel considered that, and nodded slowly. "Then I suppose it is good that they spend time together. "

"Oh!" said Dean, suddenly. "I brought you something." He swung his backpack off his back and balanced it on a smallish fallen tree that didn't have any snow on it. He pulled out a rather colorful woven bit of cloth. Angel looked confused, so Dean explained. "See, there's a hole here, for your head," he pointed, "and then it's kind of open at the sides but it's better than nothing. It's a poncho. I got it in Mexico. Or…Bobby did anyway. It's_from_ there."

Angel carefully pulled the poncho over his head. It allowed his wings freedom, he noticed, but if he tied it somewhere, it would offer him a decent amount of warmth as well, and if he had to fly or fight, he wouldn't be cold. He looked to Dean with shining eyes. "I…thank you, for this gift. It seems the sort of thing that Mary did for me."

Dean swallowed. He wondered if his mother was the first…the only person to offer him any sort of kindness. He didn't really feel comfortable asking though, he didn't know Angel well enough. "It's nothing," he said, brushing off the thanks. "I figured…you gotta be cold and you don't really have…anything. I bet we could find something that works even better, if you wanted to give it a try."

Angel smiled at Dean. "Thank you," he said again. "This will do wonderfully, Dean. It is…more than good, really." And it was. He was feeling warmer already. Dean seemed happy with that.

"I can bring other things too," he blurted, causing Angel to look up, confused. "I mean…blankets. A…tent or something, Jeans. Shoes. I mean, if you are going to be living out here, why shouldn't it be in relative comfort?"

Angel stared, more than a little confused. "Why would you do this for me?" he asked. "We don't know each other."

Dean shifted a little. 'I dunno. I just…want to help." Mary had seen something in this strange person worth helping. Worth protecting. Dean wanted to honor her memory. I wasn't sure how to best put that into words, but helping Angel felt like the right thing to do.

"Alright." Angel didn't really believe him, but…that was alright for now. "Come," said the winged-man. "I should have some fish in the trap now. I can cook you lunch."

He'd figured out how to leave traps for small game, like fish and rabbits slowly. Weaving nets from lake-plants and ferns, making snap-traps with branches and twine. He checked all of his traps once a day. If something else got to his game first, he figured that they had a right to it. Other creatures needed to eat too.

An hour later, they sat in a small outcrop near the lake, snowless and actually sort of warm, as the rocks protected them from the wind and the fire crackled merrily. Both had a fish, perfectly cooked. Dean had shown Angel how to properly gut the thing, and Angel used the knife he had taken from Sam. Dean wanted to say something about that, but Sam could get another knife and it didn't seem like Angel had much of anything.

"So," he said, conversationally, gnawing on a bit of fish. "If you were in the Cage for all that time, how'd you manage to keep things with you?"

"I thought I explained…well. They would give me a pair of new pants when my old ones got too old to wear. But when I was…fifteen years in the cage, I…I grew more frightened they would start to actually take away the things I held dear. They'd already burned the blanket. I had a few things I never wanted to lose. The photos. The first book I learned to read. And the dictionary that taught me many English words."

"You didn't know English?"

"Well, I was merely a child when I was brought there. I spoke a different language. One I have not forgotten, but can't recall learning it. I think I always knew it. But no, I didn't speak or read English, but I understood it. Anyway. I wanted to keep the photos, and those two books safe all the time. "

"What do pants have to-"

"I'm getting there. I had things I wanted to keep safe. I was allowed two books-other than the first two, that I could have at any given time. When I finished one, I'd be given another. One fiction and one non-fiction usually, though that changed sometimes. But I didn't want them taking things from me so, when I noticed that my pants were too short, I asked for the next pair, but they didn't give them to me. I decided…well it hardly mattered, so I simply took off the pants and made a little bag out of them. I had a bit of thread and needle that Mary had given me years before that I hadn't made much use of…Anyway, at some point, I suppose they had had enough of that particular…insubordination, and they gave me a bag and a new pair of trousers and after that, I managed to keep the bag with me at all times."

Dean laughed. "Dude, I can't believe you did a nudist strike all by yourself and it got you what you wanted."

Angel shrugged. "Well, it wasn't like I had any privacy at any time anyway. There were cameras everywhere, showing every angle of every room and corridor in the facility. And, since they were throwing a lot of resources into figuring out just what I am, I had more cameras on me than most. Modesty was not really an issue."

Dean was quiet, thinking about that. That sounded…well, everything about Angel's life sounded awful to a point it didn't even bear thinking about.

"This place…" Angel sighed. "It's wonderful. It's open and peaceful and there's no schedule but that I've made for myself. There are no cameras and no tests." He smiled at Dean then, and something in Dean's stomach clenched, "And I have met someone that I can talk to that does not have any ulterior motives or intent to cause me harm."

Dean offered a small smile, but the confession had disquieted him some. Well. He'd prove Angel right. "I'll make sure you never go back to that place again," he swore.

Bela was almost finished in this town. No one had seen anything at all, as she'd suspected. The monster wouldn't stay close. He was intelligent, she remembered that. He'd get as far away as he could. She looked up at the faded sign. "Singer's Auto Salvage'. There was writing underneath it, but it was too worn to make out. When she knocked, the bearded man that opened the door seemed to fit the place perfectly.

"Hello," she said, as if she hadn't done this a thousand times. "I'm Bela Talbot. I work for a group that has a vested interest in protecting…" she smiled and gave a little giggle, "well, _your_ interests."

"I ain't selling," the man, (Singer, she assumed, said, a bit suspiciously.

"Oh no," she said quickly. "You misunderstand." And that was part of her script too. "Like I said, we want to help. There's a dangerous animal that recently escaped. A monster, if you will."

"Oh Lord," sighed Bobby. "You work for that Company, don't you."

Bela hadn't expected him know about that. She blinked, faltering. "Ah. Yes," she admitted. "The earthquake a few months ago? Some of our…research subjects escaped. We've rounded up all but one," she added quickly. "He looks like a man, but he isn't one. He's got wings. Big and…dark colored. He's quite dangerous."

"Haven't seen him," said Bobby gruffly.

Another man, younger, and _god_ was he tall, came in from the kitchen, with a young blonde woman, both pink faced and a bit wet from snow. "Sam," said Singer, "in any of those long walks you take, you ever come across anything weird?"

"What? Why?" he asked. A bit too quickly.

Bela narrowed her eyes, filing that reaction away. "A monster," she said. "Looks like a man with wings."

The tall man, Sam, seemed to school his face. She doubted she'd have noticed, but she had twenty years of experience learning to tell when monsters were trying to hide their feelings and people were not that different. "Wings? No, I haven't seen anything like that," he told her.

"Well," she said, smiling, though less pleasantly, more predatory, "I'll leave my card. I'm staying at Missouri's Bed and Breakfast. Call me if you see anything?" Singer took the card and nodded, before closing the door in her face. Bela waited until she was off the property before pulling out her phone. "Sir?" she said. "I think I've found something."

Bobby was growing suspicious. Dean was always leaving, sometimes early in the morning, sometimes around mid-afternoon. He always was back several hours later, and if Bobby needed him in the shop or to take care of something at the Yard, Dean did it, either before or after his walks. Sometimes Sam went too, if Jess was busy or they needed to take a break from each other. The boys always came back with red cheeks and bright eyes, almost vibrating with excitement.

According to the Winchester boys, they were simply 'taking a walk.' So, Bobby was suspicious. Dean had never been one for 'walks.' If he went into the woods, it was for a hunt. But he wasn't doing that now. He and Sam would go into the woods, usually with full backpacks and often as not, come back with empty ones.

Rufus, down at Turner's Hardware, said they were coming to the store pretty often too, buying lumber and tools, among other things. "Aren't they a bit old for forts?" he asked Bobby, who had grunted, and made a note to confront them about it soon. There was an old Trapper's Lodge in the woods, pretty far in actually, a good four miles in, and it wasn't easy to get to, but he sort of thought they were maybe fixing it up. If hunters needed a place to stay, the cabin could be a viable option. At least, that's what he hoped they were doing. Maybe they'd tell him when they were done.

That's what he told himself. And he _had_ to believe it. At least for now.

One day, about three weeks into their acquaintance, Dean told Angel that they wouldn't be coming the next day. "It's Christmas," he said. "It's sort of expected we spend the day with our family. And right now, that's Bobby."

Angel had nodded doubtfully. He understood the basics of Christmas, sort of. He'd read the bible. And he'd read a few books that had characters that celebrated it. He was a bit unclear as to what the actual ipoint/i was, but he knew that people wanted to spend time inside with fires and trees or something. And family, that was always stressed, if Christmas was mentioned in a book.

So they wouldn't come on Christmas, but the day before, they stayed for an extra long time and helped him move his meager supplies from the tree den he shared with Mareka to the Cabin that the three of them had been fixing up to be somewhat livable. They'd at least fixed the floor, and yesterday, they had put up something Dean had called 'insulators,' and some new siding on the outside walls. The window was still broken, and the door hung off it's hinges, but they'd bought him a little lamp that, when he pushed the button on the bottom to ON would fill the room with a bright white light that made it very easy to see every part of the room.

"It'll help you when you read," said Dean, smiling. Several days ago, they had given him what they called an 'all weather sleeping bag,' that had an extra lining so in the winter time it was very warm. It was also, according to Dean, waterproof and it had a little hood that you could quite literally zip yourself inside so that absolutely no part of you would stick out. It was an odd pattern of greys and greens and browns, and Dean said it was so if you ever were out in the woods and you couldn't find shelter, you could zip yourself fully inside and people couldn't see you well.

Angel pointed out that it was snowing and also, he'd be in the cabin, but Dean had shrugged and said, "it's still warm and we haven't figured out how to get you a battery operated heater yet." They'd given him lots of gifts to the point where he was overwhelmed and tried to give them back.

"No," said Sam, firmly. "It's not too much. Everyone should be able to live comfortably and you are no exception." In the weeks proceeding the move to the Cabin, they had given him a sturdy duffel bag, three pairs of jeans, six pairs of socks and a pair of boots (they were a bit too big, as they were Dean's), a belt, as many pairs of underwear as socks, another poncho, a few blankets (some light and some heavy) something that Sam called an 'egg crate' but was really a big piece of foam that was easily rolled up, with raised bumps in the foam that created a softer surface to lay on than the ground, the lamp, and three new books. Some of these supplies had been moved into the cabin already, but most of them could be put in the duffel.

Dean stared around the cabin. "We need to get you a chair," he decided. "Or a box. Something to sit on at least. Maybe some food too. You shouldn't have to be fully dependant on….Oh!" He shoved Sam's shoulder then, causing the taller man to lose his balance and glare at his brother.

"What?" he grumbled. "And don't hit me jerk."

"Don't be such a bitch," Dean retorted. "But we should see if Eliot is still trying to sell that old camping grill thing he has."

"Oh!" Sam's eyes lit up. "Yeah. Angel," he said, turning to the winged man that had been growing steadily more confused as the conversation wore on, "There's this guy we know selling this like, camping stove. We'd have to make a firepit for you, but then we could put this metal grate thing over it, so you can lay meat or whatever on top without having to worry about it falling into the fire. He's also got these long iron fork things that you can stake things on to hold them over the fire, like you do with the sticks, except the iron bars done catch fire. And he was also selling this grill thing that you can put on top of the grate to cook other things that might otherwise fall through the slates. It's great."

Angel's eyes widened. "You'd do that for me?"

"That one we'll call a Christmas present," said Dean, grinning and clapping him on the shoulder.

"I don't have anything for you," said Angel, doubtfully.

"I want to meet the wolves," said Sam, automatically. "I've always been fascinated by them and…you said before that they listen to you."

Angel considered this. "Alright," he said. "For your Christmas gift, I will take you to meet the wolves. I will inform them about it first, so it will be in a few days."

"It's okay, you won't be getting yours for a few days either," said Dean. "I wanna meet the bear. And…uh. Apologize for almost shooting her."

"She won't understand that," he said. "The apology, I mean. She will likely fear you because you are human, but she will recognize my scent on you and be less likely to run."

"Why don't they run from you?" asked Sam, curiously. "I mean, you look pretty human."

"I suppose I do not smell it," said Angel, with a tiny shrug. "In all honesty, I don't know. But the animals of this forest have never treated me as human."

Sam nodded, thinking. Dean kept forgetting that this was not a man, but a monster. "You don't have a problem with iron, right?" he asked, suddenly wary.

Angel only sighed. "The nails we've used have been iron," he said. "I have no problem with silver or blessed materials either. Or salt or anything else. I told you, I've had all the tests done to figure out what I am."

Sam glared at Dean, who did have the grace to look a bit guilty. "Sorry. I wasn't…it's not like I was gonna turn you in or anything. I just didn't want to give you something that might hurt you."

Angel smiled. "It's fine Dean," he said. "I don't mind. When you get back, I was thinking…we can protect the cabin with the sigils you know. Probably mostly on the inside. Or…" he tilted his head. Possibly the outside too. Maybe there is a glamour that will make this place look uninhabited. " He'd only seen three humans in these woods, including Sam and Dean, but he was still nervous about discovery.

Sam nodded. "Sounds good. We'll see if we can dig something up. But…we should probably go for now," he admitted. "It's getting late, and it will take us a while to get out of here, especially if we are gonna avoid leaving tracks. "

"Goodbye then," said Angel.

Both brothers smiled back.

"Bye dude," said Dean. "And Merry Christmas."

Christmas at Bobby's was a simple affair. There was a tree, sparsely decorated, just lights, no baubles, a star at the top. There weren't any stockings. But there were several brightly wrapped packages under the tree.

It would be interesting with Jess there, really, but he liked her, and it might be nice to have someone besides the three men around.

They'd all agreed to wait until after breakfast to open presents, and Jess and Bobby had worked together to make a rather impressive spread. There were eggs, bacon and sausage (and for once, Sam didn't complain about it not being turkey bacon, whatever the hell that was), and pancakes (regular, blueberry, and chocolate chip) and of course, coffee. There were bagels and toast too, and a fruit salad.

Dean, naturally, had some of everything, and was quite stuffed and pleased by the time everything was done. Jess and Bobby decreed that since they'd made everything, Sam and Dean could put everything away. Dean's insistence that he was the oldest and therefore should be managing was unheeded and Jess threatened to slap him with the batter covered spoon if he didn't clean it. So he did. He did not dare call Jess' bluff.

Once dishes were clean and put away, the four of them reconvened in the sitting room.

Sam shoved his newspaper wrapped gift into Dean's hands first, grinning. Dean rolled his eyes, but tore in, eagerly. It was…a sock monkey hat. He raised his eyebrows at Sam's laughing. But this was tradition. They gave each other a silly gift and a more legitimate one. Dean thrust his own gift at Sam. It was sweet pea and cherry scented shampoo and conditioner. "For those silky locks," he told his brother, grinning.

Bobby had rolled his eyes at both of them. Sam and Dean had pooled their resources to get Bobby a computer and router, complete with a year of internet service. He'd gotten pissy and gruff, but Dean pointed out that it would be so much _faster_ to research without having to go to the library. And Sam had told him that he could buy rare old books on Amazon if he wanted and also cool relics on ebay and that had satisfied Bobby a bit.

Jess got a thick bracelet from Sam, silver with a Sumerian charm carved along the outside and a Latin one on the inside. She didn't have to know what it meant, but it would protect her from a lot of things. She loved it and favored him with a kiss on the cheek which made him go red.

Dean joked he should have gotten Sam a pack of condoms which made him go even redder and shove Dean off the couch and onto the floor. Jess snorted at that.

"You deserve that," she said. "You don't have to be rude." He gave her a slightly chastened look, and gave her his present to make up for it.

Dean had been rather at a loss as to what to get Jessica, so he'd ended up giving up and asking Sam what to do, and he said Jess was interested in languages, so he'd gotten her something called Pimsleur that was a slightly cheaper version of Rosetta Stone that could teach her French. "If you already know French, I left the receipt," he said. "You can exchange it for Italian or Russian or…I dunno. Greek or something. Whatever you want."

Jess smiled and thanked him. She gave both of them their presents at the same time. Dean received a new set of wrenches "for when you're working on the cars," and Sam a biography of Thurgood Marshall and an Ansel Adams photography collection. Dean teased him about that, but Sam hit him with the photography book and it hurt enough that Dean stopped teasing and started thinking about how the sharp corners of hardbacks could be used to decapitate a vampire.

Jess gave Bobby a book on Celtic lore, because she'd noticed his book on Roman myths and some of his other cultish-looking books on the shelves and thought he could use one on the Celts. It was an old book, if not a very rare one, but Bobby was pleased anyway.

Bobby gave Jess a biography, some scientist that had done something….awesome in the field of biochemistry. Dean didn't get it. Bobby had also gotten her an iron ring that had a cross on it, and that thrilled her. Apparently, she'd seen something similar once, and had described it, but was unable to find it again. Bobby had found it, it seemed, though he made it out of Iron not steel or whatever the one she'd liked was made out of, because, he reasoned, Iron would be a lot safer for her. He had had the inside coated in the steel though, to stop it from having a chance of turning her finger green. Or she might not wear it. He'd been warned about that by the seller, girls not wearing rings or jewelry that turned their skin green.

He got Dean a very nice bottle of _very_ nice whiskey, and Sam an iPod. Dean's mouth had fallen open at that, but Bobby said shortly that the whiskey had been damned expensive too, and he'd gotten the iPod for sort of cheap so Dean could shut it.

Jess had insisted on Christmas carols, which was sort of horrible, as none of them had very good voices and Sam and Dean didn't really know any Christmas carols anyway, and kept singing the wrong words.

Sam helped Bobby set up his computer and router and Jess started reading her bio-book, and Dean felt a bit at a loss. He wondered what Angel was doing. Reading maybe. Sitting in his cabin with that worn and slightly mildewed copy of the Hobbit that had been with him when he'd fled the Company. Or maybe he'd be at the lake right now, seeing if his nets or line had caught anything.

Dean sent a quick text to Eliot (who answered right away, that yeah, $75 would be great and arranged a pick up for noon the next day), and then lounged on the couch. He dozed until Sam woke him for lunch, which wasn't big, just sandwiches, but apparently, dinner was going to be huge. Which Dean doubted because no one had been cooking all day.

Sam rolled his eyes and reminded him that they'd be going to Ellen's for dinner, and Dean had been forced to confess that he didn't even remember that Ellen was back in town. She and her daughter had left years ago, after her husband had died, and he'd heard she'd set up a restaurant somewhere in the middle of the country.

"She's back now, has been for about a month," said Sam. "Dude, have you been paying attention at _all_?" No, not really. His thoughts were in the woods most of the time, surrounding a strange man that his mother had known and even, if her face in the pictures were anything to go by, loved as one of her own.

To Dean's dismay, he found they were all expected to go to church too, before dinner. Bobby told him to stop whining because it wasn't as if this was something new. Christmas they always went to church, but Dean had rather hoped to get out of it this year. No such luck.

Still, as they learned of angels singing about glory to baby Jesus, he thought of another Angel, and wondered if he'd like church. The music, maybe. He needed to play Angel some music sometime. He could bring…a walkman or something. He didn't really pay much attention to the rest of the service, planning out how he was going to take Angel his Christmas presents.

Angel was a little anxious, as he had been (though didn't remember) the day before Mary had come back from her maternity leave. Would Sam and Dean return? They did, and Angel breathed a slight sigh of relief. He had been nervous yesterday, pacing, before finally going to the Wolves and telling them he'd be bringing some humans around and they were to be nice and say hello, and then going to Mareka to tell her the same. He hadn't slept well, even with the sleeping bag and cabin and egg crate.

But Sam and Dean came today, lugging what looked like quite a heavy bit of equipment. He took it rather easily, and both looked at him in surprise, as he lead the way to the lake. He had a fire pit. He didn't need another so close to the cabin. They showed him how to work the grill and set up everything. It looked amazing. Angel was quite pleased with it. Food, he thought, had just gotten easier to cook.

Dean had also brought him a rather silly looking hat, and Sam had rolled his eyes, but Angel decided he liked the hat. "Sam gave it to me as a gag gift," Dean confided in Angel.

"Who gagged?" he asked, horrified.

"No like…a joke. We always give each other something we know we'll never use. But…It's sorta cute and I figured…you could use a hat. Most of your heat goes out through your head you know." And Angel had put the hat on his head so seriously that Dean had a difficult time not laughing. "It suits you," was all he said, though he did grin.

Sam had brought a few books as well. "You can borrow them," he said. "They're mine, but I don't read them much anymore." There was the complete Lord of the Rings, Dean noticed. And a few lore books. "I didn't know what you knew about how to protect yourself," he said. "So I brought a few books on it."

Angel had smiled, and set them reverently next to his other (few) books, near his bed. He'd also used the staple gun to pin up the Polaroid's their mom had taken, noticed Dean. Right next to his sleeping bag.

It seemed that Angel was as good at his word as the Winchesters, because he took both to meet with the wolves that very day. They'd sniffed at the brothers, growled and postured a bit, but soon went back to ignoring them, choosing to roughhouse in the snow a bit, or lay down, watching.

Mareka was even less interested than the wolves, staring impassively at both before letting out a gruff growl and padding back in her den to go to sleep. "She sleeps a lot in winter time," said Angel apologetically. "She doesn't really hibernate, but she does sleep a lot.

The next few weeks, they fell into a pattern again. Sam split his time between Jess and Angel, Dean, between Angel and the shop. Bobby remained suspicious.

One day, at one of their Winchester-less lunches, he asked Jessica about it.

"You know where those boys go?" His mind kept going back to Bela Talbot, the Company worker, and her belief there was a monster around the area. He asked her if it bothered her that Sam spent so much time away.

Jess though, just shrugged. "Not really. He sees me all the time at school. He talks about Dean a lot though. He misses him. I figure he just wants to make up for lost time." She grinned. "Plus, he's all mine when we go back to California. I'll let him have his fun for now. I think they're making a shelter or clubhouse or something. For summer when they go camping. Sam told me about it, a little. And really, it makes me feel better that they'll have somewhere safe to be when they're out in the woods all night."

Bobby wished he could share her optimism. Something kept niggling at him though, just under the skin. Something was off about the whole situation. And soon, he'd figure out what it was. 


End file.
